Rami Zurayk

Rami Zurayk is a professor at the faculty of agricultural and food sciences (FAFS) at the American University of Beirut (AUB), where he is also director of the food security programme at FAFS. Rami sits on the advisory committee of the Jameel Index for Food Trade and Vulnerability (Jameel Index), a research project launched by the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which is developing a comprehensive index to address countries’ food security vulnerability. Supported by Community Jameel, the three-year research project will measure countries’ dependence on global food trade and imports and how regional-scale threats might affect the ability to trade food goods across diverse geographic regions.

In addition to his AUB professorship, Rami was appointed as the interim director of the university's Palestine Land Studies Centre (PLSC) as of September 2022. He was also a member of the steering committee of the High-level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE) of the Committee of World Food Security (CFS) and a commissioner on the EAT-Lancet Commission on sustainable diets from sustainable food systems. He is also a founding member of the Arab Food Sovereignty Network, which comprises over 30 NGOs and unions of framers, fishermen, shepherds, workers, women and youth, in addition to consumer associations located in 13 different Arab countries.

Over the course of his career, Rami has worked and written extensively on the Arab World, focusing on the political ecology of Arab food security and its linkages with the agrarian question.