Marco Allegra (PhD Political Science, Political Studies Department, Turin University; MA Near and Middle Eastern Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) is born in 1979, and he is currently Research Fellow at the Department of Political Studies in the University of Turin, and Teacher in the Faculty of Political Science.
His research interests include: international relations and politics; comparative politics; citizenship, democracy and social geography; ethnicity, nationalism and the nation state; Middle East politics and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian researcher, commentator and human rights activist. He is a founding member of the Palestinian campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel to uphold international law and universal human rights.
He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Columbia University, NY. He contributed to the philosophical volume, "Controversies and Subjectivity" (John Benjamins, 2005) and to "The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid" (Verso Books, 2001). He has advocated for 25 years an ethical vision for a unitary, secular democratic state in historic Palestine.
David Berlin lost a good part of his hearing and many of his best friends during the few days of the Yom Kippur War in which he served as a medic in an IDF reconnaissance unit. Over the next several years his hearing returned but had become far more selective. Now, instead of the fuzzy mythologies for which he once had ears to hear, there was melancholy and rage and years later – a near desperate desire for change and some peace. Filled with hope and belief that right thinking people could help him get a handle on what had happened to his childhood dreams of a dream state and to the traumas that followed the war, David left Israel and enrolled at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. Thinkers like Paul Ricouer and Stephen Toulmin (and maybe even those with weird politics, like Mircea Eliade, Leszek Kolakowski and Allan Bloom) could undoubtedly shed some light where there was none. So at least it seemed to him back then. And in fact he was not altogether wrong. Each of these thinkers and many more did have something interesting to say about the problem which David now sees as not so much a political problem as a problem of religion. All of this is better told in his forthcoming book The Dream State, to be published by Random House, parts of which David has published in half a dozen different places including Haaretz, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Saturday Night, The Walrus (which he also edited), and the Literary Review of Canada (which he also edited). Two of his daughters are currently dating Israelis. His son is dating a Palestinian and wants to become a lawyer specializing in Shari’a law.
Efrat Ben-Ze'ev received her doctorate from the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Oxford, writing on the memories of Palestinian refugees. She has since worked on the1948 memories of Jewish-Israeli veterans and the Mandate's British policemen, recently completing a manuscript entitled: Remembering Palestine 1948: Palestinian, Israeli and British Recollections of War. She is the editor, along with Ruth Ginio and Jay Winter, of Shadows of War: A Social History of Silence in the Twentieth Century, forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. She teaches at the Department of Behavioural Sciences at the Ruppin Academic Center and is a research associate at the Truman Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Originally from the Swiss-German part of Switzerland, Michael earned both a B.A. and M.A. degree in Political Science from the University of Geneva. A former research assistant in Constitutional History and the History of Political Thought at the Faculty of Law, he is currently a teaching PhD student in International Relations at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, focusing his teachings mainly on contemporary Theories of International Conflict Resolution. Concurrently, he is writing a PhD thesis in International Political Theory on Rousseau and Hegel and their treatment of the Principle of One within their political writings. As from October 2010, he will stay at Frankfurt University for one year with professor Axel Honneth in order to finish the ongoing thesis and develop a broader research on recognition in the international realm.
Mohammed was born in Morocco and obtained his Bachelor degree from Mohamed V University in Rabat- Morocco. In 1997, he earned his Master degree from Cairo University. In 1999, he obtained le Diplôme d’études supérieur approfondi en sciences politiques from Mohamed V University. In 2008, he Obtained a doctorate in political science from the Mohammed V University in Morocco, on the subject of "The Arab Minorities’ Political Participation in Israel".
Mohammed was a researcher at the American University in Cairo between 1999 and 2000. He worked for the Moroccan embassy in Cairo between 1997 and 1998.
R. Cheran is a professor in the department of sociology and anthropology, University of Windsor. He is the principal investigator of the IDRC funded research project “Diasporas, Transnational Communities and Global Engagement.” His publications include: History and Imagination: Tamil Culture in the Global Context (co-editor) (2007) and New Demarcations: Essays in Tamil Studies (2008).
Uri Davis is a professor in the Institute of Area Studies, Israel Studies Programme of Al-Quds University, Abu Dis. He was born in Jerusalem in 1943. He has been at the forefront of the defence of human rights, notably Palestinian rights, since 1965 and has pioneered critical research on Zionism and Israel since the mid-1970. He has published extensively in these fields, including Israel: An Apartheid State (Zed Books, London 1987 & 1990; abridged edition, MRN, Laudium, 2001); Citizenship and the State: Comparative Study of Citizenship Legislation in Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Syria and Lebanon (Ithaca Press, Reading, 1997); Citizenship and the State in the Middle East: Approaches and Applications (co-ed) (Syracuse University Press, 2000) and most recently Apartheid Israel: Possibilities for the Struggle Within (Zed Books, London, 2003).
Dr Davis is a member of the Middle East Regional Committee of the international Journal Citizenship Studies; Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute of Arab & Islamic Studies (IAIS), University of Exeter and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies (IMEIS), University of Durham; Chairperson of AL-BEIT: Association for the Defence of Human Rights in Israel and MAIAP: Movement Against Israeli Apartheid in Palestine; founding member and Senior Director for Legal and Political Affairs, Mosaic Communities: Multinational Housing Cooperative in Israel: and Observer-Member of the Palestine National Council (PNC).
Dr. Marc H. Ellis, University Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Baylor Center for Jewish Studies was born in North Miami Beach, Florida in 1952. He earned B.A. and M.A. degrees in Religion and American Studies at Florida State University, where he studied under the Holocaust theologian Richard Rubenstein and the American historian William Miller. He received his doctorate in contemporary American Social and Religious Thought from Marquette University in 1980. In that same year he accepted a faculty position at the Maryknoll School of Theology in Maryknoll, New York, becoming founding director of their M.A. program and the Maryknoll Institute for Justice and Peace. He was made full professor in 1988, and remained at Maryknoll until 1995, when he assumed a position first as a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Center for the Study of World Religions, and then a Visiting Scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, as well as a visiting professorship at Florida State University. In 1998 he was appointed Professor of American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, where the next year he was named University Professor of American and Jewish Studies. In 1999 he founded Baylor University's Center for American and Jewish Studies. In 2006, the Center was renamed the Center for Jewish Studies.
His latest book, Judaism Does Not Equal Israel, was released in the spring. A review in Booklist called it “a strongly argued work that should and probably will be heatedly debated.” He has written 15 books, and numerous articles published in the International Herald Tribune, Christian Century and Ha’aretz in addition to providing commentary and analysis on NPR and the BBC.
Vanessa Farr holds a PhD from the School of Women’s Studies at York University, Toronto. She is currently the senior Social Development and Gender Advisor at UNDP’s Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People (UNDP/PAPP) where the major focus of her work is to analyze and shape responses to the gendered impacts of the ongoing crisis. She has published widely on issues related to gender, peace and security: she is co-editor of a forthcoming book, Sexed Pistols: The Gendered Impacts of Small Arms and Light Weapons (UNU Press, 2009) and before moving to Palestine, focused on gender issues in the demobilization, disarmament and reintegration of combatants in a number of conflict zones.
Daniele Giulia has obtained a Master degree in International Relations and Protection of Human Rights at the University of Turin with a thesis entitled "The Palestinian State: Imaginative Reality or Permanent Illusion?" . Daniele received the distinction “cum laude” for her thesis and was awarded the right of publication as the best dissertation of the year in the Political Science Faculty.
Daniele is currently a PhD Candidate in Politics, Human Rights and Sustainability (curriculum in Identity, Rights, Conflicts in the Political Theory) at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna di Studi Universitari e di Perfezionamento of Pisa, working on the project entitled “One Israeli-Palestinian Land: bringing together diversities or pulling similarities apart?” (January 2008-January 2011).
In November-December 2008 Daniele interned at the Vice President of the European Parliament, Luisa Morgantini, Office in Bruxelles and from January to June 2009 she worked on her research project as visiting PhD at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies (University of Exeter) under the supervision of Prof. Ilan Pappé and Prof. Ruba Salih.
Jeff Halper is an Israeli Professor of Anthropology and the Coordinator of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), a non-violent Israeli peace and human rights organization that resists the Israeli Occupation on the ground.
Jeff received his Ph.D. in Cultural and Applied Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee before moving from the US to Israel in 1973. A community worker for the Jerusalem municipality for more than a decade, he worked in the poor Mizrahi Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem. After doing research among the Jews of Ethiopia in the 1960s, he became an active advocate for their struggle to come to Israel and find a place in Israeli society, serving as the Chairman of the Israeli Committee for Ethiopian Jews.
Jeff served as the Director of the Middle East Center for Friends World College, an international college which he eventually headed, and has also taught at universities in Israel, the US, Latin America and Africa. His academic work focuses on the history of Jerusalem in the modern era (he is the author of Between Redemption and Revival: The Jewish Yishuv in Jerusalem in the Nineteenth Century (Westview, 1991), contemporary Israeli culture, nationalism and the Middle East conflict. He is the author of Obstacles to Peace, a resource manual of articles and maps on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, published by ICAHD. His new book, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, on his work against the Occupation, is published by Pluto Press (London, 2008).
Jeff Halper was nominated by the American Friends Service Committee for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, together with the Palestinian intellectual and activist Ghassan Andoni.
Adam Hanieh teaches political economy and international relations at Zayed University, Dubai, UAE and is completing his PhD in political science at York University, Toronto. His research examines the political economy of the Middle East, with a specific focus on the countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council. He worked for a number of years in Ramallah, Palestine, on campaigns in support of Palestinian children and political prisoners and is co-author of Stolen Youth: The Politics of Israel's Detention of Palestinian Children (Pluto Press 2004). His recent publications include book chapters in The New Imperialists: Ideologies of Empire, ed. Colin Mooers. (London: One World Press 2006), and The Struggle for Sovereignty: Palestine and Israel, 1993-2005. eds., Joel Benin and Rebecca Stein, (California: Stanford University Press 2006). He has also published on the Middle East in Monthly Review, Journal of Palestine Studies, and Znet.
Hazem Jamjoum is currently the Communications Officer at the Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency & Refugee Rights in Bethlehem, Palestine and is the editor of its quarterly English language publication al-Majdal. He holds an Honors B.A. in International Relations and Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Toronto. Formerly the Executive Director of the Palestine house Educational and Cultural Center in Mississauga, was the host of Toronto's only Arab community radio show KanYaMaKan on CKLN 88.1fm (2006-2008), and was an associate editor of the Journal of Law and Equality (2003-2004), and a Senior Editor of the Indigenous Law Journal (2004-2005).
Naeem is an academic, author, journalist, community leader and post-graduate student. Currently a PhD candidate and the Executive Director of the Afro-Middle East Centre, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Naeem has been employed as an associate lecturer in Political Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. His research areas include: Freedom of expression, Politics in South Africa, Political Islam, Islamic Jurisprudence of Minorities, Islamic Feminisms, the Middle East, Islam in South Africa, Revolutions.
Naeem is often interviewed by various media about issues related to freedom of expression, the media, human rights in general, constitutional issues, the Middle East, South African politics, Islam or the Muslim world, Muslims in South Africa, feminism and a number of other issues. An experienced journalist, Naeem writes for a number of publications and reports for a network of radio stations in the US. He is also a monthly columnist for the South African community newspaper Al-Qalam. He has a history of activism in the anti-apartheid struggle He has various qualifications through international courses completed at different universities in the Muslim world.
Naeem has organised and addressed many meetings, seminars, workshops, conferences, and training programmes on various issues related to South Africa, youth development, journalism, human rights, information technology, Islam, and various other issues - in South Africa and internationally.
Naeem has co-authored a book and has published numerous articles and papers in journals, magazines, newsletters, newspapers and other publications. These have ranged from new pieces to analyses and opinion pieces. He has also been invited by South Africa's Mail &
Guardian newspaper to be a regular contributor to its "Thought Leader" blog. Regularly speaks at conferences, seminars, workshops, etc on a range of issues.
Naeem was named in December 2000 on the Mail & Guardian's "Hot Shit 100 List" of people "Making their mark in the new millennium". And, in June 2006, he was included in the M&G's list of "100 young people you must take to lunch".
Omar El-Khairy is a playwright and PhD candidate in political sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research interests include the aesthetics of committed art, political economies of popular culture(s) and socio-political histories of technological innovation.
Zinaida Miller is currently a Visiting Fellow in International Studies at The Watson Institute at Brown University in the U.S. She is currently working on a project on the role of international humanitarian aid and development in subsidizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A specialist in post-conflict justice, Zinaida has conducted research in Israel/Palestine, South Africa, and Rwanda, and is the author of several articles, including "Effects of Invisibility: In Search of the 'Economic' in Transitional Justice," 2 International Journal of Transitional Justice 266 (2008) and "Settling with History: A Hybrid Commission of Inquiry for Israel/Palestine," 20 Harvard Human Rights Journal 293 (2007). Zinaida holds a JD from Harvard Law School, an MA in Law and Diplomacy from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a BA in political science from Brown University.
Paolo Napolitano is a PhD candidate in Political Science at University of Torino, Italy.
He is carrying on a research on the Palestinian political system, with particular attention to the role of Fateh. Last year he spent a period of fieldwork in the Palestinian Territories and in Israel.
Dana Olwan is a PhD candidate in the department of English at Queen’s University. Her dissertation examines the publication, reception and marketing of Arab American women’s literature post 9/11. She is interested in questions and articulations of gender, nationalism, and Islam in postcolonial literature. She has taught at both the Women’s Studies and English departments of Queen’s University. Dana’s academic work is influenced by her activism and involvement with solidarity movements for Palestine, including Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR).
Noora Sharrab is presently an MA student at York University at the Department of Political Science and is concurrently completing her Graduate Diploma Programme in Refugee and Migration Studies at the CRS. Her MRP is focused Palestinian Refugee Camps in Jordan, whereby, she recently conducted her field research in both 1948, and 1967 refugee camps. She was also actively engaged with Sudanese refugees in Egypt, where she taught them English through a collaborated Student Action Program through the American University in Cairo. Furthermore, she has been actively engaged with Palestinian Solidarity groups across borders, while simultaneously involved in Peace Research.
Rafeef Ziadah is a PhD candidate in Political Science at York University. Her research examines the history of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), with a focus on the interplay between different political tendencies within that movement. She holds an MA in International Relations from Seton Hall University. Her MA thesis analyzed the changes / challenges to the Palestinian Women’s movement during the years of the Oslo process. She has written on Palestinian refugee rights and on issues related to Palestine exile politics.
