Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi


Sultan Sooud Al-Qassemi is an Emirati commentator on Arab affairs and also a member of the Sharjah ruling family. Al-Qassemi is known for his use of Twitter and has been described by numerous media outlets as a prominent voice during the events of the Arab Spring.
In February 2014 Al-Qassemi joined the Global Commission on Internet Governance and in the summer of 2014 became an MIT Media Lab Director's Fellow. In the Spring 2017 Al-Qassemi was a practitioner in residence at the Hagop Kevorkian Center of Near East Studies at New York University, where he offered a course on Politics of Middle Eastern Art. The Gottlieb Duttweiler Institut's Global Influence list of Arabic thought leaders ranked Al-Qassemi number 19 in 2018. Also in 2018 he was named a World Fellow in the Yale Greenberg World Fellows Program. Al-Qassemi is also the Chairman of Barjeel Geojit Securities, a joint-venture that was formed with Geojit Financial Services of India.

Barjeel Art Foundation

Al-Qassemi is the founder of the Sharjah-based Barjeel Art Foundation whose mission is to promote art by artists from the Arab world through exhibitions locally and internationally. Al-Qassemi was on the panel of judges on Sheikha Manal's Young Artist Award in 2010, 2011 and 2016. Al-Qassemi was also part of the Jury and Selection Committee of The Christo and Jeanne-Claude Award 2017. In January 2020, Sultan and Barjeel Art Foundation debuted the largest collection of abstract art by Arab artists in curated by Suheyla Takesh at NYU Grey Art Gallery. This U.S. traveling exhibition explores mid-20th-century abstract art from North Africa, West Asia, and the Arab diaspora.

Barjeel Geojit

Barjeel Geojit was formed as a joint venture between Al-Qassemi and Geojit Financial Services of India in the year 2000. The company is an eight time consecutive winner of Best Performing Financial Advisor in NRI Category at the CNBC-TV18 Financial Advisor Awards. Al-Qassemi was also featured in the World Economic Forum's list of Young Global Leaders in 2011 as the Chairman of Barjeel Geojit Securities.

Articles

Al-Qassemi's articles have appeared in publications including Foreign Policy, The Guardian, The Independent and CNN. He sparked a debate in the UAE following an article in which he recommended that certain expatriates be granted UAE citizenship. In 2013 Sultan Al Qassemi was criticised for suggesting in an article that continuous civil unrest in parts of the Arab world is leading to the emergence of Persian Gulf cities as cultural and commercial centres of the region.
Al-Qassemi has written about media in the Arab world, the Jewish presence in Middle East, British journalists coverage of Dubai and atheism in the Persian Gulf among other topics. An archive of his articles and interviews appears here.

Awards & Recognitions