Meet our team
Afaf Jabiri
Afaf Jabiri is a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Centre for Social Justice and Change at the University of East London. With over a decade of experience in interdisciplinary research and teaching, she has held roles at SOAS and LSE. Her research focuses on feminist theory, intersectionality, settler colonialism, and women’s agency in the Arab region, particularly in Palestinian refugee camps, Jordan, Egypt, and Yemen. Before academia, she worked for 17 years on gender equality, humanitarianism, and migrant rights. Afaf has published extensively, including her recent book “Palestinian Refugee Women from Syria to Jordan: Decolonising the Geopolitics of Displacement.”
Aseel Abuzour
is a British-Palestinian scholar who is a registered pharmacist and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. She completed her PhD in 2016 in the area of Prescribing and Patient Safety at the University of Manchester investigating clinical reasoning processes in non-medical prescribers. Aseel’s research in medication safety focuses on developing electronic health tools to optimise prescribing and reduce potential medication related harm in hospital and prison healthcare settings. Aseel is also a co-investigator and Public and Patient Involvement and Engagement lead for a project investigating inequalities in overprescribing for older people with frailty and care home residents.
Dina Matar
Dina Matar is professor Political Communication and Arab media at SOAS, She also served as chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies from 2018 to 2024. She has published research on Palestine, including a monograph "What it means to be Palestinian" (2010); and three co-edited collections, Narrating Conflict in the Middle East (2013); Gaza as Metaphor (2016) and Producing Palestine: The Creative Production of Palestine through Contemporary Media (October 2024).
UCl/University of London Professor of communications Engineering and the founding Director of UCL’s ICCS research institute. He is the author/co-author of over 350 scientific papers and four books in electronics and communications engineering.
Active in Palestinian and Arab advocacy work in the UK; a co-founder of Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign-1986, the UK Arab British Association-2008, the British Palestinian Policy Council-2016 and serves/served on several academic advisory boards including the board of trustees of the Institute of Palestine Studies, the advisory committee of the Centre of Palestine Studies at SOAS-University of London and the board of the Centre of Lebanese Studies.
Nadia Naser-Najjab
Nadia Naser-Najjab is Senior lecturer in Palestine Studies, European Centre for Palestine Studies- Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. Prior to this, she was an Assistant Professor, Birzeit University, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Studies and the MA program in Arab Contemporary Studies. Nadia holds a PhD in Middle East Studies form the University of Exeter.
Her recent book, Covid-19 in Palestine: The Settler Colonial Context, Bloomsbury Publishing 2024.
She also published ‘Dialogue in Palestine: The People-to-People Diplomacy Programme and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020)
Her research is based on first-hand experience and original data collection.
Naema Wajeeh Aldaqsha
Naema Wajeeh Aldaqsha is a Postgraduate Teaching Associate and PhD researcher at the European Centre
for Palestine Studies, the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Her research focuses on the politics of
representation, diplomacy, and political leadership in Palestine. Naema completed her MA in International Relations
and Politics at Richmond, the American International University in London and holds a BA in English Linguistics and Literature from Al-Aqsa University in Gaza, Palestine. Naema’s most recent works include an article on pro-
Palestinian university encampments and a novella exploring historic Palestine.
Rami Morjan
Prof Rami Morjan was awarded his PhD from the University of Manchester-UK in 2005. He joined the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG) in 2006. Prof Morjan established his research lab at the chemistry department of the IUG and was awarded different national and international research grants from the Bank of Palestine and Welfare Association Fund and TWAS
and Al-Maqdisi Research Awards. In 2019, Morjan founded Orbital Company for Chemical Industries & Cosmotics which based in IUG. Orbital is the funding body for the chemistry department scholarships and awards and scientific extracurricular activities.
Rana Dajani
Rana Dajani is currently a Yidan Global Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Education, Professor of Molecular Biology at the Hashmite University, Jordan. Her area of expertise is epigenetics and biomarkers of trauma among refugees. Through her leadership, she has introduced national and regional stem cell laws and presided over numerous scientific boards and United Nations councils. She is founder of ‘We Love Reading’ and is on the list of the 100 most influential Arab women.
A tireless supporter of building indigenous research capabilities in the developing world and creating a mentoring program to support women scholars in STEM that was recognised by the National Academy of Sciences.
Saeed Abuzour
Saeed Abuzour is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Mathematics and a Mathematics Programme Leader in Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU). Foundation Year Coordinator in Faculty of Science & Engineering (2013-2024), also Head of Mathematics Department in Rossall College (2005-2007). Assistant Professor in UAE University (1993=2004). A co-founder for Palestinian Community Association Northwest. Saeed holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from the University of Manchester (UMIST) 1991
Tahrir Hamdi
Tahrir Hamdi is a professor of anti-colonial and resistance literature and President of Arab Open University/Jordan. Hamdi recently won the Palestine Book Award 2023 in the “Counter Current” category for her book Imagining Palestine. In 2020, Hamdi won the Abdul Hameed Shoman Foundation’s Arab Researchers’ Award in the Humanities. Hamdi is an assistant editor with the journal Arab Studies Quarterly. She is also an associate editor in the journal Janus Unbound and a member of the editorial board of Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies. Hamdi has co-edited a new book titled Ghassan Kanafani: Selected Political Works.
Wesam Amer
Dr Wesam Amer is a visiting researcher at Cambridge. Since 2020, Dr Amer has been the Dean of the Faculty of Communication and Languages at Gaza University. He was a Fulbright scholar and researcher at Harvard University’s Centre for Middle Eastern Studies in 2022. He was a Marie Curie fellow at Newcastle University from 2017 to 2020. Dr Amer obtained his PhD from Hamburg University in 2015. His interests in teaching and research centre around political communication, violent language, warfare, and contemporary geopolitics, with a specific focus on terrorism, security, and radicalisation.