Aitemad was a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Middle East Centre until 2020. She was an Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre from 2016–20, leading on a research project (funded by the LSE IGA–Rockefeller) investigating the gender impact of Syrian displacement in Jordan and Lebanon. In 2014–2016, she conducted research on Tunisian Salafi youth and the driving factors behind their radicalization. In 2013, Aitemad managed a regional research project in five Arab countries looking at women’s political participation across the Arab region, funded by Oxfam GB. She previously studied the historical trajectory of Gazan women’s religiosity, agency and subjectivity, drawing on different discourses of religion and secularism. Her PhD thesis in 2010 examined the effects of the Palestinian second Intifada on women’s agency. Her thesis was published in a book Agency and Gender in Gaza: Masculinity, Femininity and Family during the Second Intifada, by Ashgate (2013).

In the period 1996 to 2008, she was working as a consultant with the World Bank, UNDP, UN Women, Oxfam GB and Save the Children based in the occupied Palestinian territory. Her consultancy work was concentrated on themes of gender mainstreaming, poverty reduction, good governance, capacity building, partnership, monitoring and evaluation and youth development. She has also garnered substantive experience in policy analysis and development planning through her work as Policy Advisor for the Palestinian Ministry of Planning.