Team
Department of Development Studies, University of Vienna
Helmut Krieger
is a social scientist, post-doc researcher and lecturer at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna. His research focuses on the Israel-Palestine antagonism, social movements in the Arab World, development policies in war zones, critical state theories, and postcolonial approaches. Recent publications include: as an editor Food Sovereignty and Alternative Development in Palestine (2018), as co-editor Krise, Revolte und Krieg in der arabischen Welt (Crisis, revolt, and war in the Arab world) (2017) as well as the essays Nurturing Alternative Development: Agricultural Cooperatives in Palestine (2018), Nicht zu verwischende Spuren: Zur Dialektik von Revolution und Konterrevolution in der arabischen Welt (Tracks that can’t be covered. On the dialectic of revolution and counterrevolution in the Arab world) (2017) and Syrien – Aufstand, Krieg und Flucht (Syria – uprising, war, and flight) (2016). Furthermore, he was the Austrian project coordinator of the APPEAR project Rooting Development in the Palestinian Context. Click here to visit his profile at the University of Vienna. Role: Overall project coordinator, researcher
Klaudia Wieser
is a PhD candidate at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna and a DOC fellow of the Austrian Academy of Science. From September 2016- February 2018 she was a Junior Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK) in Vienna and from 2016- 2019 she has been a project member of the APPEAR project Rooting Development in the Palestinian Context. Currently she is working on her dissertation titled Epistemologies of Liberation: The PLO research center in Beirut. Click here to visit her profile at the University of Vienna. Role: Research assistant
Petra Dannecker
is Professor of Development Sociology and since 2011 Head of the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna. Before coming to Vienna she was assistant professor at the Department of Sociology at Bielefeld University, Germany and Senior Research Fellow at the German Development Institute in Bonn responsible for coordinating research and knowledge transfer between the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and scientific communities. She is working on issues related to development sociology, development politics, globalization and migration processes, transnationalism and gender and migration focusing regionally on South and Southeast Asia. Currently she is coordinating an EU Erasmus+ Project on transdisciplinarity as a new framework for knowledge production. Her latest publications are together with Sara de Jong (eds., 2018): Connecting and confronting Transnationalism: Bridging Concepts and Moving Critique Special Issues, Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 25 (5) (Introduction 493-506) and Dannecker, Petra (2018): The Sustainable Development Goals: A New Space for Action in: C. Al-Ekabi, S. Ferretti (eds.), Yearbook on Space Policy 2016, pp. 175-184. Click here to visit her profile at the University of Vienna. Role: Research reviewer
Centre for Development Studies, Birzeit University
Linda Tabar
is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Birzeit University. She is currently the Director of the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University. Situated in the field of Middle East politics, International Studies and Transnational Feminist studies, her research focuses on violence, dispossession, spatial politics, social movements, feminist and decolonizing struggles. She is currently working on a book entitled Palestine, Memory, Decolonization: Native Encounters and Imaginaries of Liberation. Her articles have appeared in a variety of journals including: Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Third World Quarterly, Upping the Anti, Journal of Palestine Studies, Critical Arts: Journal of South -North Media and Cultural Studies and Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Click here to visit her profile at Birzeit University. Role: Project coordinator at Birzeit University
Raed Eshnaiwer
obtained his PhD in Political and Social Sciences from Universite Libre De Bruxelles (ULB)- Brussels, Belgium, in 2018. He is currently a researcher at the Center for Development Studies (CDS) at Birzeit University BZU. He taught a course on contemporary Arab thought, and coordinated the Palestinian Archive project. His research interests revolve around refugees in the Middle East, mainly Syrian and Palestinian refugees in Jordan. His PhD thesis was on Refugees and the State in Jordan: Repercussions of Syrian Refugees on Jordanian Institutions, Security and Foreign Policy. Before obtaining his PhD, Dr. Eshnaiwer worked as a coordinator for the Forced Migration and Refugee Unit at Birzeit University, where he participated in the development of an academic concentration on Refugee and Forced Migration studies as part of the MA program in International Studies. Dr. Eshnaiwer attended many intensive courses and summer schools on refugees and migration issues. Click here to visit his profile at Birzeit University Role: Researcher
Ayman Rezeqallah
is a researcher and survey unit coordinator at the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University. He has spent nearly 20 years in community research and development, programmes focused on research methodology, marginalised groups and community development in Palestine and the Diaspora. He received his Master’s Degree in Gender and Development at Birzeit University in 2006, and is currently a Doctoral Candidate in Social Sciences at the Lebanese University of Beirut, as of 2019. Click here to visit his profile at Birzeit University Role: Researcher until March 2020
Lena Meari
is an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the director of the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine. She has special interest in the geopolitics of knowledge production; subject formation in colonial contexts; decolonizing methodologies; critical feminist theory; and revolutionary movements. Her publications include Sumud: A Palestinian Philosophy of Confrontation in Colonial Prisons, Re-signifying `Sexual` Colonial Power Techniques: The Experiences of Palestinian Women Political Prisoners, and the co-edited book Rethinking Gender in Revolutions and Resistance: Lessons from the Arab World. Click here to visit her profile at Birzeit University. Role: Researcher
Amal Nazzal
is an Assistant Professor at the Business and Economics Faculty at Birzeit University, Palestine. She received her PhD from the University of Exeter – UK, where she looked at the relevance of Bourdieu’s theory of practice for relationally capturing various organizational practices, mechanisms and dynamics in socio-cultural organizations, in particular politically-motivated social movements. Her research interests span Bourdieusian theory, social capital, social networking theory and new social media in organizations. Her research is also interested in organizational and institutional change, in addition to the relevance of movement activism and grassroots mobilization inside organizations. Her research is driven by constructing realities, and the perceptions of agents and social actors, through incorporating different interpretive methods, such as in-depth interviewing, and participant observation. She is also interested in new research methods such as digital ethnography and social media content analysis, where she employed in her co-authored latest publication: ‘Ethical Considerations and Challenges for Using Digital Ethnography to Research Vulnerable Populations’. Click here to visit her profile at Birzeit University. Role: Researcher
Tareq Sadeq
is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at Birzeit University and was the director of the Applied Statistics Master Programme at Birzeit University between 2012 and 2017. He is also an associate research fellow at the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute. He holds a PhD degree in economics since 2008 from the University of Evry Val d’Essonne in France, where he also obtained his Master degree in macroeconomics and econometrics in 2003. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Aix-Marseille School of Economics in 2014. His research interests include econometrics, labour economics, poverty dynamics, income inequalities and wage return to education. Role: Researcher
Mousawat Organization, Beirut
Kassem Chehab Sabbah
holds a BA in Arabic literature and religious studies and a Master in Health Management (MHA). He is a Palestinian born in Lebanon in 1964, an activist for the rights of Palestinian refugees and the rights of people with disabilities. Kassem Sabbah is a scholar in Islamic studies, a writer and poet. He has published several books and articles about religious reform and the role of religious men in politics and social development besides patriotic and sufi poems. He has long experiences in humanitarian work and worked for several international and local NGOs. He is a consultant and trainer in organizational and institutional development as well. Kassem Sabbah is the founder of the Palestinian Disability Forum, the Palestinian Union for People with Disabilities as well as Mousawat. Role: Project coordinator at Mousawat, Research reviewer
Rawya Moussa
is an MA student in the field of Sociology at the Lebanese University in Beirut. Rawya started working at Mousawat in 2013. She has longstanding experience in field research, planning, and data collection and analysis. Rawya led a group of social workers and sociologists through a three-year training program within the framework of the APPEAR project Rooting Development in the Palestinian Context. Currently she is leading the research unit at Mousawat. Role: Coordinator between NGOs, academic staff of the project and researchers in Lebanon, Researcher
Center for Peace Research and Peace Education, Alps-Adriatic University Klagenfurt
Claudia Brunner
is Associate Professor at the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education at the Department of Educational Science, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt. She studied Political Science, Gender Studies and Contemporary History in Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. She received her doctorate from the University of Vienna in 2009. In 2010, she joined the Centre for Peace Studies and Peace Education at the University Klagenfurt where she was promoted to assistant professor in 2015. The same year, she started her transdisciplinary research project “Theorizing Epistemic Violence” (V 368-G15, funded by the Austrian Science Fund from 2015 to 2020). Having successfully completed the latter, she earned her habilitation degree at the University of Vienna in 2019 and was appointed an associate professor at the University of Klagenfurt in 2020. For her interdisciplinary work on entanglements of knowledge and violence Claudia Brunner received two academic awards in Germany (2011, 2012). For further information, research foci, teaching, lectures and publications see www.epistemicviolence.info Role: Project Coordinater at Alps-Adriatic University from 2020
Viktorija Ratković
Viktorija Ratković is Senior Scientist at the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education at the Department of Educational Science, Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria. Her research interests include conviviality and post-migrant societies, (post-)migrant media, peace and conflict studies, and cultural and gender studies. Among her recent publications is Postmigrantische Medien. Die Magazine ‚biber‘ und ‚migrazine‘ zwischen Anpassung, Kritik und Transformation. Click here to visit her university profile. Role: Project coordinator at Alps-Adriatic University until 2020
Syrian Center for Policy Research
Rabie Nasser
is an economist, researcher and co-founder of the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR). His areas of expertise and research include macroeconomic policies, inclusive growth, poverty, and conflict socioeconomic impact assessment. He holds a MSc in Economics from Leicester University, UK. Before joining the SCPR, Nasser worked for the State Planning Commission as chief economist and director general of the Macroeconomic Management Directorate between 2004-2005. He later worked as an economic researcher for the Arab Planning Institute in Kuwait. Since 2008, he leads several United Nations research projects. Role: Project coordinator at SCPR
Ramia Ismail
is an economist and researcher at the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR). Her areas of research include economic policies and development issues in Syria. Ismail worked for the Ministry of Finance in Syria as a coordinator of the Value-added Tax Project between 2004-2005. From 2009-2011 she worked as a macroeconomic expert for the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ). Ismail is involved in several UN and international organization projects, including UNICEF. She holds a MSc in Economics of the Middle East from Philipps-University of Marburg, Germany, a MSc in Economic Policy for Developing and Transitional Economies from University of Bradford, UK, and a Diploma in Population and Development from Damascus University. Role: Researcher
Nabil Marzouk
is an economist and senior researcher at the Syrian Center for Policy Research (SCPR). His areas of research include macroeconomic policies and socioeconomic development in Syria. Marzouk worked for the State Planning Commission as a consultant and lecturer at the Planning Institute of Damascus for the macroeconomics sector. He also worked for the General Company for Technical Studies and as a consultant and expert for ESCWA, UNDP, UNIDO, and ILO. He holds a doctorate in Analysis and Economics Policies from The School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, Paris. Role: Researcher
Omar Dahi
is an associate professor of Economics at Hampshire College and a visiting fellow at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Dahi specializes in the areas of economic development and international trade, with a special focus on South-South economic cooperation and the political economy of the Middle East and North Africa. Among his publications is a co-authored book with Firat Demir entitled South-South Trade and Finance in the Twenty-First Century (2016). His articles have appeared in peer reviewed journals including Journal of Development Economics, Applied Economics, Southern Economic Journal, Political Geography, Middle East Report, Forced Migration Review, and Critical Studies on Security. Dahi is a co-founder of the Beirut School for Critical Security Studies. He is also an editor at the e-zine Jadaliyya and a researcher at the Arab Studies Institute. Previously he was one of the lead experts of the National Agenda for the Future of Syria Programme developed by ESCWA. Click here to visit his profile at Hampshire College. Role: Researcher
