Dr. Akel Ismail Kahera serves as both a professor and the director of the Islamic Architecture and Sustainable Urbanism Graduate Degree Program at Hamad Bin Khalifa University’s College of Islamic Studies in Doha, Qatar. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, he attended the Pratt Institute's School of Architecture, earning the BArch., before completing graduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MArch) and Princeton University (PhD). He is an architect/urban planner and critic with three decades of international experience. His research has been supported by grants from Qatar Foundation and the Brown Foundation, Houston, Texas. He is a trustee member of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture & Urbanism (INTBAU) and an Editorial Board member of the Journal of New Design Ideas among others.
Professor and dean of Virginia Commonwealth University School of Arts in Qatar, professor and senior associate dean of research and graduate studies at Clemson University in South Carolina, and professor and director at Prairie View A&M University, are just a few of the teaching and administrative roles that Dr. Kahera has held. He has authored more than three dozen peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and encyclopedia entries and six books: Strategic Rebuilding and Affordable housing in the Muslim world (2025); Hermeneutics of the Cave: Islam: Ontology & the Recovery of Meaning (2025); The Place of the Mosque: Genealogies of Space, Knowledge & Power (2022). Deconstructing the American Mosque: Space, Gender, and Aesthetics (2002/2008), Reading the Islamic City: Discursive Practices & Legal Judgment (2012), and Design Criteria for Mosques & Islamic Centers (2009).