Online Panel Discussion | The Renewal of the Palestinian Movement. A Transnational Unity from Below?

VIDC: Thursday, October 28, 2021, 05:00-06:30pm CET (Zoom-Webinar), 06:00-07:30pm Palestine time

Speakers: Mohammed El-Kurd, Jerusalem, Yara Hawari, Ramallah, Ahmed Abu Artema, Gaza
Moderator: Helmut Krieger
The event deals with the current protest movement in Palestine and explores the question as to whether it represents a new unity from below. To what extent has the struggle of Palestinian communities against the Israeli occupying power gained momentum, particularly in the last few months?

Watch the recording of the discussion here:

https://www.facebook.com/VIDC.org/videos/412462720470271

Podcast | Lebanon in Crisis

Nadya Sbaiti,  Assistant Professor at the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies (CAMES) at the American University Beirut, speaks to Connections host and by Jadaliyya co-editor Mouin Rabbani about the crisis in Lebanon. Listen to the podcast here.

Webinar Series | Solidarities in Times of Wars and Refuge – Syria, Lebanon and Palestine in the Global Pandemic

The pandemic caused by the Covid-19 virus has exacerbated the already fragile socio-economic situation and further stretched weak public services in several Arab states; particularly those that have been caught up in crises, political instability and wars, including Syria and Lebanon. These fraught economic realities have impacted the most marginalized communities the hardest, including migrants, day laborers, refugees (inside and outside the camps) and internally displaced persons. Social distancing and curfews, which were imposed as preventive measures to mitigate the health impact of the virus, resulted in deepening the social and psychological gaps between people and exposed the inequality  facing marginalized classes and refugee communities. Moreover, as some Arab states have increased the role of military apparatuses during the crisis, concerns are being raised about a greater reliance on securitization in the future. 

At the same time, the global crisis has been met the resurgence of grassroots and international organizing and solidarity initiatives across the Arab world. These initiatives should also be examined and understood in the context of the global pandemic and the failures it has exposed in global capitalism. With our webinar series, we provide fresh insights in particular on Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, with/by Syrian and Palestinian refugee communities in Lebanon and wider Lebanese society, past/present solidarity networks with and between communities and struggles in the region. Furthermore, alternative models based on solidarity economy will be introduced and discussed.   

You can follow each panel discussion by a Zoom link provided to you upon registration. 

First Webinar: Solidarity Inside Refugee Populations in Lebanon: Old Forms for New Crises 

Monday, 29 June 2020, 5:00 PM [Beirut time, GMT+3]. You can watch the recoding here.

Panel Discussion | Lebanon, Syria and Palestine: Colonial Histories between a Durable Presence and Present

Lecture Room A, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, NIG Universitätsstraße 7, 1010 Vienna, 20 May 2019, 5 – 7 pm .

The panel discussion engages with questions on how and why colonial histories matter in the Middle East (hereafter ‘West Asia’) today? Posed by anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler, these questions serve as a call for finding alternative analytical and methodological concepts to capture the durable colonial marks that exist in our presence/present. Following Stoler’s critique of scholars who romanticise traces of this violent past, the panel will present new research and tools of investigation that engage deep colonial fault lines in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine today.

Speakers

Helene Kazan’s (Completed her Ph.D. at the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London (2019), and is a 2018-2020 Vera List Center Fellow on Art and Politics, New School, New York) inter- disciplinary and multi-media practice investigates risk through an analysis of international law, architecture, and the human experience of violence, observed and argued through the frame of ‘poetic testimony’.

Adriana Qubaia (Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Gender Studies, Central European University) is an anthropologist of Lebanon working on mapping contemporary political and socio-economic factors that shape the negotiation of gendered non-normative sexualities in Beirut. Therefore, she challenges dominant theoretical frameworks used to conceptualize gendered sexualities in West Asia.

Mette Edith Lundsfryd Stendevad (Ph.D. interdisciplinary candidate in Sociology and History at the School of Media, Communication and Sociology, University of Leicester) enriches these diverse approaches through her extended work on oral history accounts from Palestinian women from Syria (some still living in Syria, some scattered in different European countries or beyond) speaking back to the ongoing history of violence in Syria, eviction from historic Palestine, forced separation, statelessness and borders

Concept and Moderation

Klaudia Rottenschlager (Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna),
Noura Salah Adeen (Institute for Social Anthropology, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

We invite the audience to participate in a feminist/intersectional, transdisciplinary conversation on how these specific research projects can speak to each other through a common understanding of colonial affect. The event is accessible for wheelchairs and will be held in English. Child care can be provided upon request. For further information please contact [email protected] and [email protected].

Workshop | Rooting Research in the Palestinian Context: Alternative Methodologies and Concepts

with Ayman Rezeqallah, Birzeit University, Palestine
Seminar room SG 2, Department of Development Studies, Sensengasse 3, 1090 Vienna 10 May 2019, 12.00 – 6.00pm


The workshop explores and questions mainstream social science research in the Palestinian context. It asks how we can develop alternative research approaches and analytical frameworks that can tackle the rapid transformation of the Palestinian society due to political conflict, war and Israeli military occupation of the Palestinian territories. Given the rising (Palestinian) critique of research practices by (Western) scholars and international NGOs, the workshop further sheds light on understanding the political, economic and social complexities of territorial and social fragmentation.

  • What does it mean to include Palestinian communities residing in neighbouring countries having their right to return to their homeland suspended for more than six decades in our research?
  • What are ethical responsibilities towards the (researched) communities and how can we translate (local) experiences and struggles into academic knowledge production?
  • How can the communities we work with access and use the produced data as well as our research?

In the first part of the workshop, Ayman Rezeqallah will provide insights and challenges of producing knowledge within this complex research environment. In a second step, he will discuss his experiences of developing and implementing a multidirectional research project on Palestinian youth’s identities and community participation in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, Lebanon, and Jordan.


Ayman Rezeqallah is Researcher and Survey Unit coordinator at the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University. He has spent nearly 20 years in community research and programs focused on marginalized groups including women, youth, people with disability, children, and Palestinian refugees in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. He is the project coordinator of the APPEAR higher education cooperation project Rooting Development in the Palestinian Context funded by the Austrian Development Agency.


Click here to download the event poster.


The workshop will be held in English and is accessible for wheelchairs. It is hosted by the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna. Please register for the workshop and send an e-mail to [email protected]

Introduction

© Viktorija Ratkovic

Welcome to the KnowWar website! Our new project on knowledge production in/on contemporary Syria just launched and we are excited to keep you informed on our activities.

Meanwhile, read in more detail about our project here and about who we are here. A lot of organizations are involved in this endeavour. To learn more about them, visit this link.

We will post (more or less) regular updates in our blog section. Social media channels are in the works. We hope to welcome you again soon!