Doumani was born in 1957 in Saudi Arabia, to Palestinian parents who fled from Haifa in 1948 during the creation of the State of Israel. He spent part of his early life in Lebanon, before moving to Toledo, Ohio in 1970.

Doumani received his B.A. from Kenyon College in Ohio in 1977. In 1980, he earned an M.A. from Georgetown University, where he would later receive his Ph.D. in 1990.

Academic career

From 1989 to 1997, Doumani taught at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Since 1990, he has been a faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1996 to 1997 he was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Most recently, he received a Fellowship for the 2007-2008 academic year at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

His interest lies in "recovering the history of social groups, places, and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the Modern Middle East." His specialty "is the social and cultural history of peasants, merchants, artisans, and women who live in the provincial regions of the Arab East during the late Ottoman period (18th and 19th centuries)."

Doumani is a frequent guest on Voices of the Middle East, a one-hour weekly radio program on KPFA-FM in Berkeley, California.

He is also on the advisory board of FFIPP-USA (Faculty for Israeli-Palestinian Peace-USA), a network of Palestinian, Israeli, and International faculty, and students, working in for an end of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories and just peace. [1]