Marie-Claire Bakker

Bio

Marie-Claire is an educator and ethnographer, specializing in the material culture of the Middle East. With extensive experience as a consultant in this area, she has also contributed to the fields of cross-cultural communication and maternal health counseling. Her academic research focuses on social change and transformation within the Arabian Peninsula, particularly through the lens of dress and jewelry.

As a faculty member in the Art History department, Marie-Claire employs a culturally-embedded, student-centered approach, collaborating with community partners to integrate traditional craft skills into the art and design curriculum. At the institutional level, she has contributed to strategic planning, with a strong focus on student engagement and human-centered education—values influenced by her prior role as Assistant Dean of Student Affairs for the College of Arts and Creative Enterprises. Currently, she concentrates on curriculum development, particularly in new student orientation, and provides close mentoring to at-risk students.

Alongside her longstanding work on the material culture of the Arabian Peninsula, Her research interests also include the development of culturally responsive teaching models and the decolonization of academic content and methodologies. She is currently actively involved in documenting the institutional history of Zayed University through a collaborative oral history project.

In addition to her longstanding research on the material culture of the Arabian Peninsula, Marie-Claire’s interests extend to developing culturally responsive teaching models and decolonizing academic content and methodologies. She is also actively engaged in a collaborative project documenting the institutional history of Zayed University through oral histories.

Office

Abu Dhabi - Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi

Phone:

+971 2 599 3273

Email:

Teaching Areas

Art History; Curatorial Studies; Material Culture; Research Methods

Research and Professional Activities

Oral history and material culture documentation; material culture and design innovation; institutional oral history; comparative ethnography in the Arabian Gulf; engagement and cross-cultural pedagogy in creative sector higher education in the UAE and wider Gulf region; Higher Education administration.

Recent Publications

Bakker, M. & McKeown, K. (2020) “From Cradle to Grave: A Life Story in Jewelry”, In I. Baird & H. Yağcıoğlu (Eds.), All Things Arabia: Arabian Identity and Material Culture, (pp 193-212). Brill

Bakker, M. & Al Hammadi, M.  (2018). Liminality: Narratives of identity on Abu Dhabi's desert Islands. Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies Volume 48:13–22