Dr. Binyam Sisay Mendisu currently serves as an Associate Professor of African Languages and Linguistics at The Africa Institute, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Binyam’s research considers language as an archive of local knowledge and memory. He taught at Addis Ababa University for some years, and he was the founding Dean of Faculty of Humanities (2010-2012). Recently, he worked as an education specialist at UNESCO International Institute for Capacity Building in Africa (IICBA) leading programs and projects on teacher policy development, mother tongue and early childhood education in several countries in Africa. He is an alumnus of the Global Young Academy (GYA) where he was a co-lead of the Science Advice and Fundamental Science working groups. He is also a facilitator and Steering Committee member of the African Science Leadership Program (ASLP), University of Pretoria.
In 2020, he was one of the global expert steering committee members convened to debate and rearticulate human development for the 21st century, which is a joint initiative of UNDP and International Science Council (ISC). He is a member of the Governing Board of International Network of Government Science Advice (INGSA) and serves as Vice President for Capacity Development.