Dr. Guita Hourani is the Director of the Lebanese Emigration Research Centre (LERC) and Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at Notre Dame University. She is also Co-Founder, Director of the International Campaign, and the Secretary-General of Lebanon Dialogue Initiative. She has a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Global Studies, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies in Japan. She is presently Country of Origin Information Expert on Lebanon for the Fahamu Refugee Programme Oxford, England and Member of the Committee for Women Political Empowerment, Lebanon among others.

She was a Fellow of the Civic Education and Leadership Fellowship program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University in New York and a Fellow at the Institute of Christian Oriental Research at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C, USA. She also served as a member of the Migration Expert Committee of the Directorate of Migrants at the Lebanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a member of the UNDP National Academic Working Group on Migration in Lebanon. She was an International Development Consultant at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. While in the USA, she pioneered a course on the role of women in war, peace and conflict resolution and lectured on it in various universities and institutions.

She co-edited and published with Dr. Rita Stephan and Dr. Cornelia Horn a memorial volume dedicated to the late Professor Rita Sabat (1974 – 2013) entitled “In Lin with the Divine”: the Struggle for Gender Equality in Lebanon (2015). She is the author of Understanding Socioeconomic and Political Mobility of Naturalized Kurds in Lebanon (2018) and The Impact of the Summer 2006 War on Migration in Lebanon: Emigration, Re-Migration, Evacuation, and Returning (2006).  She co-edited with Mario Najm and Jasmin Lilian Diab Proceedings of the Dialogue and Best Practice Forum: Peace, Stability, and Prosperity–The Case of Serbia and Kosovo (2017) and co-edited with Jasmin Lilian Diab Dialogue and Best Practice International Forum:  History, Geography, Reconciliation–The Case of Northern Ireland (2019).

Dr. Hourani has conceptualized, designed methodologies, implemented and written final reports on projects related to migration, refugees, socioeconomic mobility, political participation, human insecurity, integration policies, dialogue, and access to information.

Among her current research projects a study on Lebanese women migrant returnees and their political participation and a study on the role of the Lebanese political parties in the diaspora.

Participant in: December 2018 Fellowship: Peacebuilding and Women’s Meaningful Participation in Peacebuilding Processes