RC28NYU Abu Dhabi

RC28 Conference · Abu Dhabi

Campus and venue

The host

A research university on Saadiyat Island.

NYU Abu Dhabi is a degree-granting portal campus of New York University, and its graduates receive NYU degrees. Teaching began downtown in 2010 with an inaugural class of 148 students. The campus on Saadiyat Island, designed by Rafael Viñoly, opened in 2014 and was built for around 2,600 students.

The NYU Abu Dhabi Institute has run conferences, workshops, and public lectures here since 2008, and keeps dedicated conference space and workspace for visiting scholars.

The university

A campus built for exchange

Two thousand students, a hundred and fifteen countries, one New York University degree.

Network

New York, Abu Dhabi, Shanghai

New York University awards degrees on three global campuses: New York, Abu Dhabi, and Shanghai. Thirteen more academic centers are spread around the world, from Accra to Buenos Aires, and students move between them — 512 NYU Abu Dhabi students spent a semester at another site last year.

Community

Who is on campus

More than 2,000 undergraduates and over 200 graduate students, from more than 115 countries and speaking some 75 languages. A quarter of them are Emirati. The 375 faculty hold more than 55 nationalities between them. NYUAD’s most recent figures (opens in a new tab).

The host division

Social science here

The Division of Social Science teaches social research and public policy, economics, political science, and legal studies, and is led by the sociologist Paula England, a past president of the American Sociological Association and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Its research groups work on neighborhood segregation and diffusion through networks, labor migration and recruitment, political polarization and economic inequality, and the behavioral design of public policy, among much else.

Setting

Saadiyat Cultural District

The campus stands beside the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the Zayed National Museum, and the Natural History Museum, twenty minutes from the city center. Its own Arts Center programs a public season of theater, dance, and music.

What to see nearby
  • The Campus Center at NYU Abu Dhabi, its louvred upper floor projecting over a glass entrance, with an avenue of palms and students sitting on low benches in front of it.
  • Campus residential buildings at dusk, with the towers of central Abu Dhabi across the water behind them.
  • A conference reception in a double-height atrium on campus: round tables laid for lunch, a buffet line, and people standing among display boards.

Campus photographs courtesy of NYU Abu Dhabi.

Spaces

Where sessions take place

Plenary

Main auditorium

Keynote lectures and the opening and closing sessions.

Parallel sessions

Seminar rooms

Paper sessions run in parallel across several rooms.

Posters & breaks

Open areas

Poster displays, coffee, and lunch share the circulation space between rooms, so conversations carry on between sessions.

Finding your way

Map of the NYU Abu Dhabi campus on Saadiyat Island, labeled in English and Arabic. The two buildings the conference uses are highlighted: C2, the Campus Center, and A6, the Conference Center. Also marked are the campus entrance, Sexton Square, the East Car Park, coffee shops, lifts and stairs, and the Welcome Center, Art Gallery and Bookstore. Floor plan of the C2 Campus Center, with the East Forum highlighted and the C2 entrance marked. Floor plan of the A6 Conference Center, with the auditorium, the lecture hall and rooms A6-001C, A6-006, A6-009, A6-012 and A6-015 highlighted, and prayer rooms, lavatories and water fountains marked.
RC28 campus map, reproduced courtesy of NYU Abu Dhabi. Open the full PDF