Dr Sarina Wakefield is the Founder and Director of the Museums in Arabia conference series. She has led the series since its inception in 2012, working with international partners and funders in Doha, London and Manama.

Sarina is a Lecturer and Director of Partnerships, Recruitment & Alumni in the School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester in the UK. Previously, she has lectured at College of Arts and Creative Enterprises, Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates and at UCL Qatar on the MA in Museum and Gallery Practice. Also, she has worked on museum and heritage projects in the UK and Bahrain. Her primary research focuses on critical heritage studies and museology of the Gulf. More broadly, she is interested in transnational identities, globalisation, universal museums, franchise museums, the global art market, heritage and migrant identity and the relationships between heritage and sports. She has published around these subjects in international journals and books and is author of the recent monograph Cultural Heritage, Transnational Narratives and Museum Franchising in Abu Dhabi (2020, Routledge). She is the editor of Museums of the Arabian Peninsula Historical Developments and Contemporary Discourses (Dec 2020, Routledge) and the co-editor for the book series Cultural Heritage, Art and Museums in the Middle East (Routledge). She received her BSc in Archaeology and her MA in Museum Studies from the University of Leicester (UK) and her PhD from the Open University (UK). add another page.