Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi

Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi (born 1978) is an Emirati publisher and public official, a daughter of the Ruler of Sharjah. She founded Kalimat Group, the UAE's first dedicated Arabic children's publisher, in 2007, co-founded the Emirates Publishers Association in 2009, and served as president of the International Publishers Association in 2021–2022 — its first Arab president and second woman president. She has been president of the American University of Sharjah since 2022, and in 2025 she was appointed a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Education and Book Culture. ^{1 2}

Al Qasimi was born in 1978 in Sharjah, into the ruling Al Qasimi family; her father is Sheikh Sultan bin Muhammad Al-Qasimi, Ruler of Sharjah since 1972, and her mother is Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi. ¹ She is a sister of Hoor Al Qasimi, the two being named together, with their brother Khalid and sister Noor, as children of the same parents in the article on their father. ³ She earned a BA in archaeology and anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1999 and an MSc in medical anthropology from University College London in 2002. ¹ She is married to Sheikh Sultan bin Ahmed Al Qasimi, who was appointed Deputy Ruler of Sharjah in August 2021. ¹

In 2007 Al Qasimi founded Kalimat Group, the first dedicated Arabic-language children's publisher in the UAE, which has grown to five imprints and publishing rights in fifteen countries; in 2016 she established its philanthropic arm, the Kalimat Foundation, whose Pledge a Library initiative distributes books to children in refugee camps and whose Ara programme serves visually impaired children. ^{1 4} She co-founded the Emirates Publishers Association in 2009 and founded the UAE Board on Books for Young People the same year, and she chaired the committee that secured Sharjah's selection as UNESCO World Book Capital for 2019. ¹ Elected to the International Publishers Association's executive committee in 2014 as its first Arab woman member, she became its vice president in 2018 and its president in early 2021 — the first Arab and the second woman to lead the association since 1896 — serving until December 2022; during her vice presidency she founded the PublisHer network for women in publishing, at the London Book Fair in 2019, and established the Africa Publishing Innovation Fund through a partnership between the IPA and Dubai Cares. ¹ In Sharjah she chairs the Sharjah Book Authority (from May 2023), the Sharjah Investment and Development Authority (Shurooq), the Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park and the Sharjah Entrepreneurship Center, and since 2022 she has been president and chairperson of the American University of Sharjah, the first woman to hold the role. ¹ Her own books include the picture book World Book Capital (2021) and The House of Wisdom (2024), which won the BolognaRagazzi Award in fiction at the 2025 Bologna Children's Book Fair, making her the first woman from an Arab Gulf state to receive the prize. ¹ She led Sharjah's nomination of the Faya Palaeolandscape to the UNESCO World Heritage List, and in October 2025 she was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Education and Book Culture. ¹

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