Dubai Abulhoul

Named after the city itself, Dubai Abulhoul is an Emirati author, columnist and Rhodes Scholar who has carved out a distinctive place in international affairs and public debate. In 2021, she founded Fiker Institute, a Dubai-based international-affairs think tank whose research spans global governance, diplomacy, decolonisation, climate security, gender equality and the future of multilateralism. Its mission, in her framing, is to reverse a one-way conversation: “For far too long, the world has always had an opinion about the Middle East; it’s now time for the Middle East to have an opinion about the world.”

The institute runs research programmes, fellowships, publications and events, and operates a Politics Library at Alserkal Avenue housing more than 15,000 books on foreign policy, global politics and international development.

Abulhoul graduated from NYU Abu Dhabi and earned a master’s in Diplomacy and Global Governance at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.

She served as a UAE diplomat between 2018 and 2020 and has published a series of six children’s books aimed at Emirati folklore.