Keynote Speech

Palestine Teaches: Why History Matters

Dr Rana Barakat

Rana Barakat is an Associate Professor in the Department of History and Director of the Birzeit University Museum. Her research interests include the history and historiography of colonialism, nationalism, and cultures of resistance. She earned her PhD in history from the University of Chicago and has since published in several venues including the Journal of Palestine Studies, Jerusalem Quarterly, Settler Colonial Studies, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. She has a forthcoming book with UNC Press titled: "Ongoing Return: Mapping Memory and Storytelling in Palestine," which advances an Indigenous understanding of time, space, and memory in Palestine by focusing on the details of the people and place of Lifta village over time. And her second book, in-progress, "The Buraq Revolt: Constructing a History of Resistance in Palestine," argues that the 1929 revolt was the first sign in the Mandate period of sustained mass resistance to the settler-colonial project, including direct and rhetorical actions against both political Zionism and British imperialism, planting seeds of mass political mobilization.

Conference Plenary

Ruins and Rebuilding: Academic and Activist Solidarities Across Borders

Dr Hashem Abushama

Dr Hashem Abushama is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford. He holds a DPhil in Human Geography and an MSc in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford, and a BA in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College in the United States. He is also a EUME Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin as well as a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies. He writes on dispossession, arts, urbanization, the archives, and postcolonial Marxism.

Dr Muna Dajani

Dr. Muna Dajani is an action researcher with a background in critical political ecology. Her work aims to understand environmental and water governance through decolonial and critical lenses. She holds a PhD from the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her doctoral research focused on examining community struggles for rights to water and land resources in settler colonial contexts in Palestine and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, with special attention to how farming practices acquire political subjectivity. Dajani is currently a Fellow in Environment at the Geography and Environment Department at LSE.

Dr Jasmine K. Gani

Dr Jasmine K. Gani is Assistant Professor of International Relations Theory at the London School of Economics and Politics Science. She writes and teaches on (anti)colonialism, knowledge production, theory and history of International Relations, and the Middle East. Her work on the Middle East focuses particularly on Israel-Palestine, Syria, Egypt, the role of western powers, ideologies and social movements, and anti-colonial solidarities. Her research has been published in International Studies Quarterly, Security Dialogue, International Affairs, Postcolonial Studies, and Millennium, among others; and she has authored and co-edited books on anti-colonialism, the politics of the Middle East, and the Syrian conflict. Prior to joining the LSE in September 2024, she was a Senior Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St Andrews, where she was co-Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies. She was previously an Editor of the journal Millennium, and currently sits on the editorial board of International Affairs.

Dr Gholam Khiabany

Gholam Khiabany is a Reader in Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London. His research interests centre on the media and social change and the relationship between communication and democracy with particular reference to the Middle East. His publications include Iranian Media: The Paradox of Modernity; Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran (with Annabelle Sreberny); and The Handbook of Media and Culture in the Middle East (co-edited with Tourya Guaaybess, Joe Khalil and Bilge Yesil)). Gholam is a member of council of management of the Institute of Race Relations and editorial board of Race & Class.

Dr Aya Nassar

Aya Nassar is an Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Durham University. She is an interdisciplinary scholar in between politics, Urban and Political Geography, and Middle East studies. She writes about questions of memory, archiving, (geo)poetics of space, infrastructure and affective and material aspects of cities. Her research has focused on post-colonial/post-independence Cairo, the aesthetics and poetics used to represent and depict Arab cities, and space and memory work in Egypt.

Keynote Speakers