Wafa Ghnaim
Wafa Ghnaim is a Palestinian dress historian, researcher, author, archivist, curator, and educator who began learning embroidery from her mother, award-winning artist Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, when she was only two years old. After publishing her first book, “Tatreez & Tea: Embroidery and Storytelling in the Palestinian Diaspora” (2016 & 2018), Wafa founded The Tatreez Institute (Tatreez & Tea), a global arts education initiative and the first of its kind, teaching courses in Palestinian, Syrian and Jordanian embroidery techniques and lecturing virtually and at leading institutions, museums and universities around the world. In 2017, she became the first-ever Palestinian embroidery instructor at the Smithsonian Museum, and in 2023-2024 earned a prestigious academic fellowship as a Senior Interdisciplinary Research Fellow for The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Throughout her career, she has been featured in major media outlets, including Vogue Magazine, which named her and her mother “the world’s leading guardians of tatreez”. Wafa holds a BA in Political Science & Art History and MA in International Management from Portland State University and a post-baccalaureate in Arabic at George Washington University. Wafa is currently the Curator for the Museum of the Palestinian People and a Research Scholar for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Ancient Near Eastern Art.
