Qatar Week Team

Qatar Week Team

Qatar team

• Asmaa Benkermi, Communications Manager
• Darrell Pinontoan, Manager, Web and Digital Analytics
• Erzum Naqvi, Social Media Manager
• Ghenwa Yehia, Assistant Director of Communications
• Haya Daher, Senior Graphic Designer
• Isabel Latayan, Administrative and Events Coordinator
• Kathryn London-Penny, Executive Director of Strategic Communication
• Lejla Nikšić, Director Of Strategic Engagement
• Mark Olpindo, Travel Coordinator
• Maya Roeder, Events Manager
• Moza Al-Suwaidi, Senior Graphic Designer
• Nadia AbuDayeh, Senior Manager, Media & PR
• Sara Shaaban, Creative Director

Richmond team

• Debbie Farris, Director of Communications and Marketing
• Kelly Kerr, Director of Constituent Engagement
• Ryan Sprowl, Art Director

Contributors

The exhibition Huna Wa Hunak: Convergent Practices in Design is organized by The Gallery and Interior Design department at VCUarts Qatar, in partnership with The Anderson and the Interior Design department at VCUarts Richmond.

Qatar team

• Chase Westfall, Head of Gallery
• Dr. Haitham El-Hammali, Associate Professor, Interior Design
• Meriem Aiouna, Associate Curator of Special Projects
• Dina Alkhateeb, Associate Curator of Campus Projects
  

Richmond team

• Kristin Carleton, Assistant Professor, Graduate Program Director, Interior Design
• Hannah Bashkow, Gallery Administrative Assistant and Preparator, The Anderson
• Sarah Irvin, Administrative Coordinator, The Anderson

Presenters

Astrid Kensinger
Chair of Graphic Design, (IN)>Tangible Lab PI Chair, VCUarts Qatar

Astrid Kensinger is an Associate Professor and Chair of Graphic Design at VCUarts Qatar and Principal Investigator of the Institute for Creative Research’s (IN)>Tangible Lab. Her interdisciplinary research and creative practice explore information visualization, cartographic performance, visual communication, and site-specific narratives, with a particular focus on intangible cultural heritage (ICH), cultural memory, and contemporary environmental and social issues.

Kensinger’s practice investigates the map as both a visual and performative medium, using mapping, walking, sound, participatory research, and designed experiences to reveal relationships between place, memory, culture, and ecological knowledge. Her research is grounded in collaborative and field-based methodologies that bring together communities, students, cultural institutions, and interdisciplinary partners.

Her current research in Qatar examines desert cultural practices, traditional ecological knowledge, food heritage, endangered cultural narratives, and the relationships between people and landscapes. Projects including Mapping Migration Memories and In Search of the Desert Truffle connect archival research, oral histories, sensory experience, visualization, and exhibition-making to create new forms of cultural documentation and public engagement.

Kensinger’s international research collaborations span Japan, Singapore, Australia, Europe, and the Gulf.

Haithem El-Hammali
Associate Professor, Interior Design, VCUarts Qatar

Dr. Haithem El-Hammali is an Associate Professor of Interior Design at VCUarts Qatar, with more than two decades of academic and professional experience across Qatar, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Libya. His teaching and research explore the intersection of interior architecture, human-centered design, and emerging technologies, with particular interests in BIM, immersive environments, virtual and mixed reality, and AI-assisted workflows in the design process.

At VCUarts Qatar, he has led and contributed to collaborative projects connecting students with industry, cultural organizations, healthcare partners, and international institutions. His teaching emphasizes experimentation, evidence-based design, creative exploration, and the integration of digital technologies throughout the design process.

For Qatar Week 2026, Dr. El-Hammali is contributing to a cross-campus collaboration with Professor Kristin Carleton, connecting Interior Design students at VCUarts Qatar and VCUarts in Richmond. Through the Steelcase NEXT Design Competition, the initiative encourages students to exchange ideas, research, design strategies, and feedback while documenting their evolving design process. The collaboration strengthens shared learning, peer engagement, and meaningful dialogue between the two campuses.

Hawa Stwodah
Assistant Professor, Department of Fashion Design + Merchandising, VCUarts

Hawa Stwodah (B.F.A., M.F.A.) is a designer, illustrator, and educator with experience in fashion, textile design, product development, and technical design. She has worked in the US and the Gulf, collaborating with European and Asian companies on experimental projects using innovative textiles for menswear, women’s sportswear, healthcare, and infant accessories.

After working in the private sector, Stwodah returned to the Virginia Commonwealth University Fashion Design + Merchandising Department in 2005 to teach at both the Virginia and Qatar campuses. Her research and design practices explore social and cultural behaviors through material investigation and meaning. Her work draws from diaspora studies, unconventional textiles and their uses, and traditional Central Asian surface design techniques. She has presented her research and projects at both national and international venues, including conferences, museums, and workshops. She aims to encourage creative problem-solving and promote cross-disciplinary collaborations in both classroom and professional settings.

Jennie Cook
Assistant Professor, Department of Fashion + Merchandising, VCUarts

Jennie Cook (B.A., M.P.I.) is an educator, researcher, and innovator with experience spanning fashion merchandising, marketing, digital design, technology, and software development. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Merchandising from Virginia Commonwealth University and her Master of Product Innovation from VCU’s da Vinci Center. Her interdisciplinary professional background informs her approach to teaching, research, and creative problem-solving.

Cook’s research and teaching practices explore the intersection of fashion, technology, and innovation, with particular interests in emerging technologies, digital prototyping, generative artificial intelligence, and the evolving relationship between education and industry. Drawing on design thinking and interdisciplinary collaboration, she continually reimagines classroom experiences to integrate emerging tools, encourage experimentation, and connect academic learning with contemporary industry practices.

At VCUarts, Cook has developed courses in Merchandising Portfolio and CLO 3-D, emphasizing technology integration, professional development, and creative exploration. She received the university’s Faculty Award for Distinguished Adjunct in 2019 in recognition of her contributions to teaching. Through her work, she aims to foster curiosity, critical thinking, and adaptability while preparing students to navigate and shape the future of the fashion industry.

Kristin Carleton
Assistant Professor and Graduate Program Director of Interior Design, VCUarts

Kristin Carleton is an Assistant Professor and the Graduate Program Director of Interior Design in the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as VCUarts Sustainability Lab leader. She holds a Master of Architecture from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech), and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design from James Madison University.

Kristin is a Well AP and LEED AP BD+C certified Interior Designer and Licensed Architect with professional experience and teaching methodologies focused on fostering wellness through interior design interventions and sustainability practices.

Her teaching emphasizes that interior design work becomes more successful when diverse perspectives participate in developing it, and that the goal of every design project should be to make life better for people who use the spaces created.

Louis-Philippe Demers
Professor, Kinetic Imaging, VCUarts Qatar
Mesh Lab, Institute for Creative Research

Louis-Philippe Demers is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and researcher whose work explores robotics, embodied interaction, participation, and immersive experience. Over the past three decades, he has created more than 450 machines for theatres, museums, festivals, and public spaces, with works presented internationally at Ars Electronica, Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, VIDA, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, and the Helpmann Awards.

He holds a Ph.D. in Robotic Performances, and his current research investigates experiential artworks, procedural authorship, and the shifting relations between human and machine bodies. His academic career has included senior positions at the University of the Arts/ZKM in Germany, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and Queensland University of Technology in Australia, where he directed the Creative Lab.

He is currently Full Professor in Kinetic Imaging at VCUarts Qatar and has also held visiting and mentorship roles at Diriyah Art Futures, University of the Arts London, the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, and the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Nada Raafat Elkharashi
Interdisciplinary Research Designer | Founder, nrk- research-based design studio
Adjunct Professor, VCUarts Qatar

Nada Elkharashi is an interdisciplinary research designer and founder of NRK, a research-based design studio exploring how culture, material, behavior, and everyday life can shape new forms of design. Recognized as a Forbes Middle East 30 Under 30 honoree, her practice spans product design, installations, sensorial experiences, creative storytelling, and material research.

Her work challenges conventional understandings of positive change by focusing not only on materials, but on the relationships people build with objects, behaviors, and their environments. Through form, material, and function, she creates work that questions familiar habits, restores cultural depth to everyday experiences, and proposes alternative ways of living and interacting.

Nada’s works have been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Rossana Orlandi Gallery in Milan, Salone del Mobile at Milan Design Week, the Museum of Applied Arts in Serbia, Das Arabische Kulturhaus in Berlin, and across key venues in Qatar, including the Museum of Islamic Art. Most recently, she presented an installation at the 15th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea

Paul Thulin-Jiménez
Associate Professor, Department of Photography and Film, VCUarts

Paul Thulin-Jiménez is a photographer, book artist, and writer in Richmond, Virginia, and Associate Professor in the Department of Photography + Film at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he has taught since 2002.

He grew up between two family archives: twenty-six thousand photographs from his Swedish-American father’s side and thirty-four from his Puerto Rican mother’s. That gap drives his work on memory, diaspora, and who gets kept in the record. He calls his method doculiterary: documentary in which meaning builds through sequence and association rather than any single image.

His books include Pine Tree Ballads (Candela Books, 2019) and Isla de Las Palmas (2021), whose Collector’s Edition is held by Centro at Hunter College, the Museum of Modern Art Library, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Isla de Las Palmas: 100 Years, a portfolio of letters from Puerto Ricans to a reader a century from now, was made with book artist Rory Sparks. He received a 2025 VMFA Professional Fellowship and is at work on Sol y Sombra, photographs and writing set in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

Reema Abu Hassan
Founder of Clay Encounters
Adjunct Faculty in MFA in Design, VCUarts Qatar

Reema Abu Hassan is a designer, architect, ceramic artisan, and educator based in Doha, Qatar. In 2018, she founded Clay Encounters, a ceramic design studio dedicated to reviving the craft of pottery and cultivating an appreciation for craft through collaboration, design, and community engagement.

Drawing on her background in architecture and digital fabrication, her practice bridges craft and design, often realized through interdisciplinary collaborations with artisans, artists, and designers.

Alongside her practice, Reema teaches in the MFA in Design program at VCUarts Qatar and is currently pursuing a PhD focused on the role of female artisans and designers in Qatar in shaping cultural preservation. Her work spans architecture, design, and the development of a local craft ecosystem, informing an interdisciplinary approach in which digital fabrication and traditional craftsmanship converge and where education, research, and practice remain deeply interconnected.

Rola Khayyat
Assistant Professor, Painting + Printmaking, VCUarts Qatar

Rola Khayyat is a Lebanese visual storyteller, curator, and educator based in Doha. Her work blends photography, archives, and personal narratives to explore memory, silenced histories, and belonging. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is Assistant Professor in the Department of Painting + Printmaking at VCUarts Qatar.

Sarah Elawad
Alumna, VCUarts Qatar

Sarah Elawad is a Sudanese artist born and raised in London, UK. She received her MFA in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art in 2023, her BFA from VCUArts Qatar in 2019 and currently resides in Brooklyn, NYC.

Sarah makes artwork that celebrates beauty, love, and her culture often highlighted through explorations of her interpersonal relationships. Her visual practice is collage-like, kitsch, and experimental encompassing a wide range of materials such as experimental prints, garments, textiles, video art, installations and more.

Sarah has had work exhibited in New York, Amsterdam, Doha, Shanghai, Istanbul and more. Her most recent solo-show was in Doha at VCUArts Qatar Gallery and before that it was an installation on the Africa Center windows at their grand building on 5th Ave in New York.

Sara D. Reed
Assistant Professor, Department of Interior Design, VCUarts

Sara Desvernine Reed, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Interior Design at Virginia Commonwealth University, where she teaches the history and theory of interior environments at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She is committed to helping students deepen their design practice through rigorous historical inquiry and critical analysis.

Reed earned her doctorate at the University of Delaware in American material culture studies, with a focus on American art and decorative arts. Her dissertation expanded into the Atlantic world, examining domestic advice literature in Cuban popular magazines of the 1950s and 1960s to explore shifting ideals of modernity, gender, and domesticity during a period of political transformation.

In addition to her scholarly research, Reed’s collage practice investigates storytelling and “story healing” as forms of empathic connection across time and place. Her broader research interests include design pedagogy and the integration of historical analysis into contemporary design processes.

Sara Wilson McKay
Associate Professor, Department of Art Education, VCUarts

Sara Wilson McKay, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Art Education, previously serving as Department Chair. She values community in learning and directs the Marshall-Hunter Integrated Arts Research Fund to cultivate transdisciplinary learning through art.

Since 2012, Dr. Wilson McKay has worked at the intersection of art and healthcare: she co-founded “VCU Art of Nursing,” working with 1500+ nursing students to enhance clinical reasoning; and she co-developed an Arts in Medicine course focused on mitigating biases in healthcare, which won the 2021 Medical Education Innovation/Research Award.

She was selected as a 2022-23 Harvard Macy Institute Fellow in the Art Museum-Based Fellowship for Health Educators, a 2024 delegate to Arts Health Research Intensive in the UK, and she investigated creative aging and health equity for people with disabilities through research grants. She currently leads the VCUarts Arts & Health Lab and previously chaired the National Art Education Research Commission.

Sulthan Abdul Cader Abdul Rahhem
Former Master Tailor and Technical Fashion Coordinator in the Fashion Design Program, VCUarts Qatar

Sulthan Abdul Cader Abdul Rahhem brings over thirty years of hands-on experience in garment construction and craftsmanship in Qatar, placing technical precision at the heart of his work.

From 2002 to 2025, he served as Master Tailor and Technical Fashion Coordinator at VCUarts Qatar, collaborating closely with emerging designers to transform creative concepts into runway-ready garments.

Career highlights include contributing to the Liberty of London Abaya Project and constructing a student-designed sports abaya worn by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. He is also the founder of S&S Fashion, extending his journey in tailoring and fashion design. Outside of his professional endeavors, he enjoys collecting antique sewing machines, drawn to the history and care behind each piece.