This event will be the launch of The Untold Story of the Golan Heights: Occupation, Colonization and Jawlani Resistance edited by Muna Dajani, Munir Fakher Eldin and Michael Mason. Copies of the book will be available to buy during the event.
This landmark volume is the first academic study in English of Arab politics and culture in the occupied Golan Heights. It focuses on an indigenous community, known as the Jawlanis, and their experience of everyday colonisation and resistance to settler colonisation. Chapters cover how governance is carried out in the Golan, from Israel's use of the education system and collective memory, to its development of large-scale wind turbines which are now a symbol of Israeli encroachment.
To illustrate the ways in which the current regime of Israeli rule has been contested, there are chapters on the six-month strike of 1982, youth mobilisation in the occupied Golan, Palestinian solidarity movements, and the creation of Jawlani art and writing as an act of resistance.
Rich in ethnographic detail and with chapters from diverse disciplines, the book brings together Jawlani, Palestinian and UK researchers. The innovative format also includes shorter 'reflections' from young Arab researchers, activists and lawyers that respond to more traditional academic chapters.
Muna Dajani holds a PhD from the Department of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics (LSE). Her research focuses on documenting water struggles in agricultural communities under settler colonialism. She is a Senior Research Associate at the Lancaster Environment Centre (LEC) where she works on a project entitled “Transformations to Groundwater Sustainability” (T2GS), exploring grassroots initiatives of intergenerational holistic groundwater governance. She has contributed to numerous studies on the hydropolitics of the Jordan and Yarmouk River Basins.
Munir Fakher Eldin is Associate Professor in Philosophy and Cultural Studies, and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Birzeit University, Palestine (BZU). He has directed a new Masters Program in Israeli Studies at BZU (2015-2021) and worked as a research fellow at the Institute for Palestine Studies, Ramalla (IPS). Munir has published in Arabic and English on British colonial land policies in Palestine as well as on current issues in Palestine and the occupied Golan Heights. Among his edited volumes is The General Survey of Israel 2020 (Arabic) published by IPS. He holds a doctoral degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and History from New York University (2008).
Michael Mason is Director of the Middle East Centre. He is also Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Environment and Associate of the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment. His research interests encompass environmental politics and governance, notably issues of accountability, transparency and security.
Omar Tesdell is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Birzeit University, Palestine (BZU) and studies landscape and agroecological transformation in the Eastern Mediterranean. His research works to make more resilient and just agricultural landscapes. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography and Sustainable Agriculture from the University of Minnesota and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University in New York in 2015. He has also edited an Arabic-English guide entitled Palestinian Wild Food Plants, 2018 (CC licensed e-book) as part of a community-based research collective. Other recent publications include "Garden Gathering" in A Garden Among the Hills: The Floral Heritage of Palestine, The Palestinian Museum (2019).
Omar Al-Ghazzi is Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. He works on the geopolitics of global communications, particularly in relation to news media and popular culture. He is interested in the political contestation of narratives around digital technologies, as well as of representations of time and memory, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa.
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