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The Al-Attiyah Foundation was a ‘Knowledge Partner’ at the Local Conference of Youth (LCOY) Qatar 2025, held on at Georgetown University in Qatar Saturday.Organised under YOUNGO, the youth constituency of the UNFCCC, the event gathered students, activists, and experts to channel youth-driven messages into the COP climate process.As part of its contribution, Al-Attiyah Foundation hosted a high-level panel discussion that explored the complex and urgent transition facing energy-producing nations.The session was attended by young delegates from across Qatar and beyond, and featured dynamic exchanges between experts from industry, academia, and policymaking.The distinguished panel included Adil Mohammad, Deputy CEO of MBK-Global; Michael Wood, Partner, Mena EY Sustainability; and Dr Marcello Contestabile, Chief Economist at QEERI.Together, they addressed pressing issues such as the balance between energy security and climate goals, the role of natural gas as a transition fuel, and the opportunities presented by emerging technologies including carbon capture, green hydrogen, and energy storage solutions.The discussion also examined the financing and policy frameworks needed to accelerate renewable energy deployment, with a particular focus on how sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises can lead the way in diversification.Importantly, the panel emphasised the role of youth in driving innovation, awareness, and advocacy for a just and ambitious energy transition.The session drew on Qatar’s unique position as a global leader in LNG production and its growing investments in renewable energy, situating the Mena region at the heart of global climate and energy debates.The conversation underscored both the opportunities and challenges for countries reliant on fossil fuel revenues as they seek to align with the Paris Agreement and the global net-zero agenda.Through the event, the Al-Attiyah Foundation reaffirmed its role as a bridge between policymakers, industry leaders, and the next generation, highlighting the importance of youth voices in shaping pragmatic yet ambitious pathways to sustainability.The outcomes of the session will contribute to the official LCOY Qatar 2025 statement, ensuring that the perspectives of young people in the region are heard on the global stage.

As war rages on in Sudan, Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) concluded Saturday its intellectual and cultural gathering on “Seeing Sudan” to shed light on the urgent crisis.Scholars and creatives used the safety of the diaspora to bring attention to the thousands dead and millions displaced, and offered a roadmap to post-war recovery that ensures the preservation of the country’s rich legacy of being a centre of knowledge and culture.Journalist and GU-Q practitioner-in-residence, Nesrine Malik, captured the essence of the gathering, saying: “The challenge has been to think not only about what the war in Sudan is, but what Sudan itself is.”“With the erasure of cultural memories, physical artifacts, and history, the only way to hold on to it has been through storytelling, narrative, music, literature, and art,” she said.Over the course of three days, conference participants highlighted how creativity and resistance are intertwined, collectively imagining a future based on reinvesting in education and cultural production, welcoming home displaced citizens, advancing scientific and industrial capacity, and drawing together politicians, civil society organisations, and grassroots movements to rebuild the country together.The packed opening of the “Sudan Retold” art exhibition and book launch at Alhosh Gallery poignantly depicted the complex relationship between a nation and its people, and highlighted the devastation of war.“Who is missing right now are the artists in this room, barely any of them are here, and I want to dedicate this moment to them,” said Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann, researcher at Peace Research Institute, and exhibition co-curator. “While their art can travel, the artists can’t, they are trapped.”By tapping into cultural narratives, the conference shed light on universal themes of love, belonging, and loss in a time of uncertainty.“War does not define our art,” said Yafil Mubarak, curator, and director of Dara Art Gallery in Khartoum. “Our mission is to investigate the modes of expression that spill out of our consciousness into the world.“Sudanese art is an essential part of the narrative of the country, we are stabilising this world that barely sees us,” he stated.Part of the GU-Q’s “Hiwaraat” conference series drawing attention to the most pressing topics, the event became an essential platform for Sudanese cultural solidarity during a critical moment in history.

The “Sudan Retold Edition 1½”, a compelling exploration of Sudanese cultural wealth and intellectual achievement, was launched Friday at Alhosh Gallery at The Pearl Island.The event featured a book launch and an accompanying art exhibition, immersing attendees in photography, paintings, and multimedia installations that bring Sudan’s creative stories into dialogue with themes of memory, space, and community.Curated by Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) Artist-in-Residence Khalid Albaih, alongside Larissa-Diana Fuhrmann and Abdelrahiem (Rahiem) Shadad, the project invites audiences to engage with Sudanese narratives beyond dominant political or historical frameworks, opening a space for alternative voices, layered interpretations, and artistic testimony.The initiative is part of the “Seeing Sudan: Politics Through Art” conference, a three-day event that began on September 18 at the Four Seasons Doha.It also forms part of a long-term project, now more than a decade in the making, that unites Sudanese artists, writers, curators, and cultural workers responding to a country often reduced to a single narrative despite its diverse cultures, religions, languages, and histories.Edited by Albaih, Fuhrmann, and Suzi Mirghani, the second volume of “Sudan Retold” was developed amid Sudan’s fragile transitional period: from the revolution, to renewed repression, to the 2021 military coup.With many contributors now displaced by ongoing conflict, the work resonates across geographies, weaving fiction, personal memory, archival fragments, and visual storytelling.The curators noted that the book and exhibition “are not historical overviews. They are fragments, fictions, testimonies, and visual narratives. They draw on personal archives, oral histories, forgotten objects, and speculative figures – not to reconstruct a singular past, but to open space tor layered, plural understandings of Sudan”.Among the featured works is *The Khartoum School by Ayat R H Ahmed, highlighting the influential Sudanese modern art movement shaped by artists such as Ahmed Shibrain, Ibrahim El Salahi, and Kamala Ishag.El Salahi, who once studied art in London, fused Western influences with Sudanese traditions to create a distinctive style that redefined audiences’ perceptions of modern African art.Also showcased is *Echoes of the Studio: Faces from the Archive by Waleed Mohammad, which reimagines mid-20th-century Sudanese studio portraits and family photographs, offering a meditation on continuity, change, and loss across generations.Another installation revisits “The Neighbourhood Association”, a tradition dating back to 1990 in Khartoum’s Burri district, where women organised collective support for community events, embodying enduring practices of solidarity.The exhibition also features *An Ode from the Diaspora, a series of illustrated poems that narrate fictional conversations between Sudanese creatives wrestling with self-doubt on the eve of the 2019 revolution – an exploration of art’s power to inspire change.

Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) will hold “Seeing Sudan: Politics Through Art”, a landmark three-day conference from September 18-20 at Four Seasons Doha that promises not just to inform, but to transform the way the world views Sudan. “At a time when Sudan’s crisis risks invisibility, this conference amplifies Sudanese voices and highlights the transformative role of culture in sustaining resilience and hope,” said GU-Q dean Safwan M Masri. “The 50 leading scholars, artists, and activists speaking at the conference will show how art functions as politics by other means, with memory as its medium, imagination as its arena, and survival as its aim.” Anchoring the programme is the keynote panel “Eyes on Sudan”, featuring Zeinab Badawi, legendary broadcaster, president of SOAS University of London, and author of the bestselling book *An African History of Africa (2024). She will be joined by Khalid Albaih, internationally celebrated Sudanese political cartoonist and GU-Q’s 2025 Artist-in-Residence; Nesrine Malik, award-winning journalist and author whose writing has reshaped global understandings of politics and identity; and Rashid Diab, one of Sudan’s most influential contemporary artists. Together with Masri as moderator, they will ask urgent questions about Sudan’s past, present, and future, and challenge audiences to engage with a rich cultural legacy in peril. Beyond the keynote, attendees will experience live music by Alsarah of Alsarah & The Nubatones, and musician and composer Huda Asfour; attend a special art exhibition and book launch for *Sudan Retold at Alhosh Gallery; and engage in immersive discussions on art, film, music, and life in Sudan and the diaspora. The event extends beyond academic dialogue, offering participants the chance to engage with Sudan’s cultural heartbeat in the midst of crisis. As the GU-Q marks its 20th anniversary, “Seeing Sudan” exemplifies its aim to foster bold scholarship and dialogue that bridges cultures, honours diverse histories, and addresses the world’s most pressing challenges.

Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) has welcomed its largest incoming class during new student convocation, with its 160 members representing nearly 50 countries defined by ambition, purpose, and global perspective, a statement said. GU-Q dean Safwan Masri welcomed students to their new home, encouraging them to embrace optimism in today’s troubled world, saying: “You now inherit a legacy built long before your arrival – Jesuit and Islamic traditions bound by a common call to justice and service... Imagine the world as it should be, then rush toward it with unrelenting intent.” This year’s incoming class of world shapers includes one of the BBC’s 100 Most Influential Women, Nawal Butt, a fierce advocate for disability rights. She exemplifies the spirit of all the incoming students, which encompasses award-winning pianists, debate champions, community leaders, and polyglots from nearly every corner of the globe. During the welcoming ceremony, students were inspired on their journey by associate professor of history Waleed Ziad, an award-winning scholar of Muslim revivalism in Asia, who reminded them that the “GU-Q is a place where empathy is cultivated through real encounters, made possible by Georgetown’s holistic, ethical, and engaged educational ethos, and Qatar as a global hub for thought, culture, and education”. For this year’s incoming class, joining the Georgetown community is just the first step toward their ambitions. They enter prepared not just to learn, but to become the empathetic, proactive leaders that their nations require.