Dr Omar Al-Hafith is an academic and architect with more than a decade of experience in academia and the construction industry. His research and teaching focus on the environmental performance and energy efficiency of built environments with a special focus on residential buildings. His research work has included conducting thermal comfort surveys, monitoring buildings’ environmental conditions, and undertaking simulation experiments. His present research work in this field focuses on the correlated impacts of buildings’ design and occupants’ behaviour on energy consumption in buildings.

Alongside this research interest in building performance analysis, Dr Al-Hafith is also interested in undertaking studies in the field of cultural heritage preservation and documentation with a special focus on post-conflict and post-disaster contexts. Among his distinctive research work in this field is his contribution to a UK-Iraq research project funded by the British Academy on the preservation and documentation of Old Mosul’s cultural heritage: Preserving the Disappearing Cultural Heritage of Post-War Mosul

In teaching, Dr Al-Hafith is an Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy. He has an established track record of research-informed teaching in the UK and Iraq. He taught for three years in Iraq at Cihan University (2012 – 2015). In the UK, he was an associate lecturer at the University of Plymouth (2017 - 2020), contributed to teaching and training workshops at Nottingham Trent University (2020 – 2022), and he is currently a Lecturer in Built Environment at the University of Plymouth.

Over the past ten years, Dr Al-Hafith has engaged in the teaching of architectural design, environmental building design, architectural graphics, modelling and simulation tools, and cultural heritage preservation & documentation.

At present, at the University of Plymouth, Dr Al-Hafith teaches Low Energy Building Design and Design Projects.