Dr Sleiman El Hajj

Visiting Fellow, Hilary term and Trinity term 2026

Biography

Sleiman El Hajj is Associate Professor of Creative Writing, and Founder of the Creative Writing Program, at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon. He is the editor of Lebano-Pathography: Converging Pathologies and Lived Narratives Since August 4, 2020 (Routledge, 2025).

Given the abundance of cultural ills – the corruption, insecurities and hardships that undergird daily life in Lebanon – illness as a research-shaping trope in literary, cultural and social studies is all the more pressing and pertinent, especially so in the aftermath of the August 4 explosion and its long-lasting impact on mental and physical health alike. Dr El Hajj has designed interdisciplinary courses in Life and Illness Writing, which invite students to craft a spectrum of narratives exploring the intersection between physical/medical and cultural/social ills. He has conducted qualitative, life and illness writing, research in the Lebanese context, authoring over 15 peer-reviewed publications since 2020.

Dr El Hajj was ranked in 2023 and 2024 among the top 2% of scholars in the world, according to the annual rankings list published by Stanford University and Scopus-Elsevier. In 2025, he was awarded the International Association of Autoethnography and Narrative Inquiry Outstanding Article Award for his essay on sexual blackmail. His writing interests include creative nonfiction, gender studies, narrative constructions of home, queer theory and Middle Eastern literature.

Dr El Hajj has been appointed to research fellowships at the University of Oxford’s Department of International Development (ODID), and is currently Visiting Fellow at Oxford University’s Oxford Lifelong Learning (Department for Continuing Education). He is working on a book project entitled, Participatory Biography as Crisis Ethnography: A Creative Writing Intervention.

Working with Oxford Lifelong Learning

Dr El Hajj will engage closely with Oxford Lifelong Learning’s rich academic and writing community, contributing through a series of research forms ranging from workshops to lectures. His fellowship will support dialogue across disciplines and encourage creative, critical exploration of narrative and writing practice.