 Farhat moved to Northern Ireland in 1979 as a senior research fellow at Queen's University, Belfast and then to the Republic of Ireland as the chair, professor and head of School of Music in Trinity College Dublin (1981–95).He has been a guest lecturer at numerous institutions including universities of Michigan, Illinois, Indiana; Princeton, Stanford, Berkeley, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Durham, Amsterdam, Cologne, Warsaw, Ljubljana, Copenhagen, Stockholm and The Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C.He has been the external examiner at University of Durham School of Music (1991–1994) and Royal Irish Academy of Music (2001–2004 and 2011–2014).