American University of Sharjah (AUS) has signed an agreement with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), under the patronage of Her Highness Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, President and Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of AUS, to establish the UNESCO Chair in Arabic Language, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Heritage at AUS, making AUS the only university worldwide to host a UNESCO Chair of its kind. The chair will support cultural preservation through high-tech solutions, expanding access to Arabic language and heritage while strengthening scholarship, skills development and community participation.
“Arabic carries the memory of a region, its ideas, its poetry and its everyday voices,” said Dr. Tod A. Laursen, Chancellor of AUS. “When archives remain undigitized or dialects go undocumented, heritage becomes harder to reach and easier to lose. This UNESCO Chair will unite rigorous Arabic scholarship with responsible AI and digital humanities to preserve, curate and open new pathways to Arab cultural and linguistic heritage at scale, while training people who can carry this work forward. It reflects the Emirate of Sharjah’s enduring commitment to culture and knowledge, and it positions AUS to contribute meaningful research, accessible digital resources and regional capacity that serve communities across the Arab world and beyond.”
The chair’s objectives include preserving and providing access to Arab cultural and linguistic heritage by collecting, digitizing and curating artifacts, including endangered Arabic dialects, through innovative digital tools and multilingual metadata standards. It will also advance interdisciplinary research at the intersection of Arabic studies, AI and digital humanities by integrating AI, machine learning and digital tools to produce scholarly publications, open-access resources and new approaches to contemporary debates in Arab societies.
“With the unprecedented speed and scale of advancement and use of AI, especially Large Language Models, language is playing a critical role in the way technology is transforming societies. We must ensure that the Arabic language, used daily by more than 500 million people, is fully contributing to and benefiting from these transformations. This is the aim of UNESCO and its Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud Programme for the Arabic Language, and we are delighted to join forces with the newly launched UNESCO Chair in Arabic Language, AI and Digital Heritage to reinforce the role of Arabic as a global language of culture, science and innovation,” said Irakli Khodeli, Chief of Management of Social Transformations (MOST) and Foresight Section, Sciences Sector, UNESCO.
In addition, the chair will build regional capacity by establishing a training platform offering workshops, certification programs and opportunities for early-career scholars, media professionals and cultural practitioners to develop skills and share research. It will strengthen cross-regional collaboration by developing open-access digital projects with institutions in the Arab States, Africa and Asia-Pacific and with UNESCO networks, while engaging youth and communities in digital storytelling and heritage initiatives. The chair will cooperate closely with UNESCO, other UNESCO Chairs and the University Twinning and Networking Programme (UNITWIN) networks on relevant programs and activities.
At AUS, the UNESCO Chair will be grounded in existing strengths in Arabic language and cultural scholarship. It aligns with the work of the university’s Center for Arab Studies and Islamic Civilizations, which emphasizes the Arabic language, heritage, history, arts and cultures of the Arab and Islamic worlds through a specialized lens that complements and challenges Western approaches. It will also draw on expertise from across several departments at AUS, including the Department of Arabic and Translation Studies, whose faculty specialize in Arabic linguistics, literature, Islamic studies, translation and interpretation and Arabic as a foreign language, supporting the chair’s research, training and public-facing impact.
