Dr. Suzanne Hammad, holds a PhD in Sociology from Queens University, Belfast and an MA in Social Policy and Administration from the University of Nottingham. Over the past year in her role as Advisor to the Executive Director’s Office at the Centre for Elderly Empowerment and Care (Ehsan), she supported the centre’s social services and outreach programmes targeting older persons in Qatar through research, evaluation, advice, and staff capacity building.
Dr. Hammad conceptualized and led the first qualitative study on dementia caregiving in Qatar in 2016/17, an Ehsan-Qatar University partnership and continues to research the mental health of aging populations. Previously as Research Assistant Professor at Qatar University’s Centre for Humanities and Social Sciences, she engaged in research and debates on family and youth studies, dementia policies and practices, and other sociological debates.
Before relocating to Qatar, she was Principal Consultant at INTRAC for Civil Society in Oxford, UK, building on over 20 years of experience in civil society development and community-based work with UN (UNICEF & UNRWA), international and national organizations in the MENA region. Her current interests lie in the areas of social protection and inclusion in policies and practices with a focus on empowering and researching vulnerable population groups and promoting inclusion in knowledge production through epistemological shifts and participatory research methods. Some of her recent related writings include: Mental Health and the Aging Population: Challenges and policy implications; Stigma and Mental Illness: Insights from the literature and implications; Dementia caregiving in the Middle East and North Africa: a scoping review; Sociocultural insights on dementia caregiving in Qatar: the perspectives of family caregivers; Islam and mental disorders of Older Adults: Religious text, belief system and caregiving practices.
