Dr. Sally Khalifa Isaac

Before joining the National Defence College in Abu Dhabi, Dr. Sally Khalifa Isaac has been working as a Professor of Political Science at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University since 2017. Dr. Isaac obtained her Ph.D. degree in International Relations from the Università degli studi di Milano, Italy, in April 2006. She has been a Mediterranean Dialogue Fellow at the NATO Defence College (NDC) in Rome in 2010, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Kolleg-Forschergrupe of the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, in 2011-2012. She has also been a visiting researcher in a number of distinguished European research centers, such as the Middle East and North Africa Center of the Freie Universität Berlin in 2013, and the Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) in Milan in 2014.

In terms of University leadership positions, Dr. Isaac worked as the University of London UoL President at the European Universities in Egypt (EUE) from October 2023 to November 2024. She has founded and directed the M.Sc. program in Political Science at the British University in Egypt from 2020 to 2022. She has also founded and directed the professional master’s program in international political and economic studies, a joint programme between Cairo University and the General Secretariat of the National Defence Council in Egypt, in 2016-2017. She has directed the Euro-Mediterranean Studies program at Cairo University from 2015 to 2017.

In addition to her work at Cairo University, Dr. Isaac lectured at a number of universities in Egypt and Europe, including: the Università degli studi di Padova in Italy, the Freie Universität Berlin in Germany, the American University in Cairo, and the British University in Egypt. She cooperated with a large number of international institutions and research centers, including: the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in Egypt, the UNDP in Egypt, the European Parliament in Brussels, the Carnegie Europe Center in Brussels, the Institute of International Affairs (IAI) in Rome, and acted as a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations University Institute on Globalization, Culture and Mobility (UNU-GCM) from 2015-2018.

Dr. Isaac has supervised more than 25 master’s and doctoral dissertations. Her research interests focus on the international relations of the Middle East, the Mediterranean and the Horn of Africa areas and their relations with major powers. Her research has a particular focus on Euro-Mediterranean studies and European foreign and Defence policy and its implications on the Arab region. She has more than 60 publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, policy-oriented research, and contributions to international reports. Most of these focus on the topics of European-Arab relations, the security of the Mediterranean and the Arab Gulf, the policies of major powers towards the Arab region, and inter-Arab relations.

Dr. Sally Khalifa Isaac is an Egyptian national, and speaks Arabic, English, and Italian fluently.