Remembering Dr. Sawsan Saadi Al Halbouni – teacher, researcher and alumna of The University of Manchester

Remembering Dr. Sawsan Saadi Al Halbouni – teacher, researcher and alumna of The University of Manchester

University of Manchester alumna and teacher and researcher, Dr. Sawsan Al Halbouni, has sadly passed away and the entire University staff and community join with Sawsan’s family in remembering and celebrating her life. Her two sons, Abdullah and Hussein Zaid Al Keilani, who are also both alumni of the University and kindly shared the sad news, have prepared a tribute to their remarkable mother.

Our mother, Dr. Sawsan, had always been an example to us and a great ambassador for Alliance Manchester Business School (AMBS). Within the family, she was influential in us choosing to study at AMBS and Abdullah is now in the process of starting the DBA (Doctor of Business Administration) at AMBS. She managed many different roles within her career and didn’t stop teaching or researching, despite her illness. In fact, she completed her book chapter on big data and fraud detection that was approved for publication from a respected journal in the USA, just three days before she passed away.

Dr. Sawsan Halbouni completed her Master’s degree and Bachelor in Accounting in Jordan, during the 1990s. She was passionate about the field of academia, and her motivation inspired a university co-founder to give her the chance to practice education in Jordan. Over the following several years, she was able to make an excellent impression on many students and faculty, and then she decided to undertake her Ph.D. at the University of Manchester, in the UK.

The decision to move to the UK was not easy, especially for a mother with five children. She was very motivated to live in Manchester and study at the University for many reasons, especially the speciality and quality of programme she was looking for, and also the depth of research carried out there. She made her doctoral thesis in international accounting a research paper and applied the knowledge and skills she learned from the University to enhance research, a commitment lasting until her final days. She completed her Ph.D in 2000.

She was very much research-oriented, something she learned from The University of Manchester and applied during her entire career. Over the past 15 years, she had been very active after being promoted to Assistant Professor at the University of Sharjah and then Associate Professor at the Canadian University Dubai. By the end of her career, she had published more than 20 research papers and many of these in top tier publications.

She had always been inspiring us to learn the quality of thinking required for research and how to use these capabilities academically - something that we had never really understood until we also joined The University of Manchester.

Everything that we enjoy now as a family is thanks to her inspiration and our mother’s influence will continue within our family and for students well into the future, thanks to her career-long dedication to teaching and research. Her legacy will live on.