Fawzia Al-Ashmawi
Fawzia Abd Al-Minem Al-Ashmawi (Arabic: ) is an Egyptian academic, writer, and translator. She works as a Professor of Arabic Literature and Islamic Civilisation in the University of Geneva. She had won the Golden Award in Sciences and Arts from Egypt. Early life. Al-Ashmawi was born in October in the 1940s in Alexandria. Her mother was Egyptian with Syrian roots, and her father was Alexandrian from Al-Siyala neighbourhood in Ras Al-Teen district. She has two sisters and two brothers. She went to a convent school during primary school, and she went to Alexandria  University where she studied in the Department of French Language in the College of Arts, from which she graduated in 1965. Abd Al-Aziz Abu Zaid was a colleague of hers, who proposed to her after she graduated, then they got married afterwards. In the summer of 1972, when she was in her thirties, Al-Ashmawi left Egypt for the first time in her life and headed to Switzerland. Her husband had already left six months earlier before she and her two children followed. Al-Ashmawi continued her studies in social sciences there until she graduated from the College of  Arts in University of Geneva in June 1972. Continuing her studies, she received her MA in 1974, and her PhD in 1983 in Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Her MA thesis was about Prophet Mohammed’s personality in French Literature, while her PhD dissertation was "Woman and Modern Egypt in the Work of Naguib Mahfuz""." Al-Ashmawi worked as a translator and counsellor in some bodies of the United Nations in Switzerland, and for ISESCO and UNESCO. She also worked as a cultural counsellor in the Embassy of Saudi Arabia, then for that of the United Arab Emirates in Geneva . She got promoted from the position of an assistant professor to become the Head of the Arabic Language and Islamic Studies Department in University of Geneva. Positions. She held several positions: Works. She has several publications: