About the Speaker
Ghassan Abu-Sittah is a multi-award-winning Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon, with a worldwide reputation as one of the world’s leading specialists in Craniofacial surgery (facial deformities), aesthetic surgery, cleft lip and palate surgery and trauma related injuries. Professor Abu-Sittah is a passionate and active humanitarian. A British Palestinian, he has worked as a war surgeon in numerous conflict zones including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, South Lebanon and the Gaza Strip. He is Clinical Lead for the Operational Trauma Initiative at the World Health Organization’s EMRO Office and serves on the board of directors of INARA, a charity dedicated to providing reconstructive surgery to war injured children in the Middle East, and Board of Trustees of the UK based Medical Aid for Palestinians.

About the Moderators

Serena Fadel '25, IAPA and Biology

Abrar Qureshi is chief of the department of dermatology at Rhode Island Hospital. He is responsible for managing clinical services, educational and research activities and administration of the department of dermatology. He is also the chair of dermatology at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Prior, Qureshi served as associate physician in the department of dermatology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. He has also held academic appointments at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston Veterans Administration Hospital. He received his medical degree from Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan, and his master of public health degree in clinical effectiveness from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his internship in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, his residency in dermatology in the Combined Harvard Residency Training Program and a research fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. He has received numerous awards, among them: several mentorship awards from the Medical Dermatology Society, and the Outstanding Service Award and Diversity Mentorship Award from the American Academy of Dermatology.

Loubna Qutami, Brown University Postdoctoral Research Associate in Palestinian Studies, is an assistant professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Qutami is a former President’s Postdoctoral Fellow from the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Berkeley (2018-2020) and received her PhD from the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside (2018) and an MA from the College of Ethnic Studies: Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas program at San Francisco State University (2013). Qutami’s research examines transnational Palestinian youth movements after the 1993 Oslo Accords through the 2011 Arab Uprisings. Her work is based on scholar-activist ethnographic research methods. Qutami’s broader scholarly interests include Palestine, critical refugee studies, the racialization of Arab/Muslim communities in the U.S., settler-colonialism, youth movements, transnationalism, and indigenous and Third World Feminism. Qutami was a co-founder of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and is currently a member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective (PFC).