Luma Hamdan

Luma Hamdan, Director, Darat al Funun – The Khalid Shoman Foundation, Amman, Jordan

Luma Hamdan has been Director of Darat al Funun (DaF) – The Khalid Shoman Foundation since 2014. DaF – meaning “a home for the arts” – is a pioneering art foundation located in Amman, Jordan, providing a platform for exchange and supporting contemporary Arab artists in Jordan and the Arab world since 1988. She oversees the overall operations including the development of the annual exhibition programme and weekly activities, as well as finance, digital information systems and human resources.

Hamdan also leads and supervises the implementation of educational programmes and training workshops aimed at supporting national and international capacity building. These include an international residency exchange programme, a PhD fellowship established in 2011, the Summer Academy and the Lab for innovative youth projects. She represents DaF at global conferences, and expands and consolidates networks of collaborative partnerships with peer institutions and universities to exchange and produce knowledge. She also oversees the digitisation of the Foundation’s archives and the preservation of the Khalid Shoman Collection. Hamdan is also an ex-officio member of the Darat al Funun Advisory Board.

From 2008–13, Luma worked as Executive Director for the Arab Foundations Forum (AFF), a network of regional grant-making foundations that promotes strategic philanthropy in the Arab world. From 2001–05, she worked as an Economic Development Bureau consultant for Arab Countries at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland.