Special Double Seminar: “Exploring Palestinian Memories: Past, Present, Future”

Session 1: Memory in Practice: Archives, Witnessing, and Resisting after Gaza. March 12, 2026, Thursday, 15.00-16.30 CET (3.00-4.30 pm UTC)

Session 2: A Future without an Aftermath: Nakba Memory, Justice, and Self-Determination, April 30, 2026, Thursday, 16.00-17.30 CET (4.00-5.30 pm UTC)

These are members-only events. To register, please log in to the members’ area of the MSA website (Link Here)

Framework:

There is a significant body of established and emerging scholarly work on memory about Palestine, which is a vital resource in understanding the impact of the past on the present and future. This double seminar aims to foreground this work, with a focus on Palestinian voices, at a moment of political, physical, and mnemonic erasure. How does the genocide in Gaza affect the work of memory practitioners on the ground, archivists, memory activists, and ordinary citizens? How do Palestinians, in the Occupied Territories, in Gaza, in Israel, and in the diaspora, situate it within longer historical trajectories of the Nakba? How are Palestinians (and their allies) imagining and constructing Palestinian futures? How do the arts, architecture, media and civic initiatives for justice contribute to keeping Palestinian memory alive and visible?

The two sessions bring together leading Palestinian memory scholars, practitioners, and activists to discuss and reflect on how we remember, narrate, and transmit the past in the face of ongoing catastrophe. The seminars are an intervention and an invitation: a space to reflect together on the meanings of memory amidst dramatic upheavals, and imagine justice through the recovery of a memory that is not yet past.

Convenors: Yazan Hamzeh Abu-Jbara, Doron Eldar, Ana Figueiredo, Rosanne Kennedy, Nadim Khoury, Meymune N. Topçu, Emina Zoletić

Session 1 : Memory in Practice: Archives, Witnessing, and Resisting after Gaza

Time: March 12, 2026, Thursday, 15.00-16.30 CET (3.00-4.30 pm UTC)

Moderators: Meymune N. Topçu, Ana Figueiredo

Focus: Memory practitioners working in and about Palestine have to constantly face and document people’s lived experiences of ongoing conflict and trauma. Their work is permanently intertwined with collective memories of long-lasting violence and oppression, which shape individual and community identity processes and the dynamics of resilience and resistance, as perfectly captured in the Palestinian concept of “Sumud”.

In this seminar, leading Palestinian scholars and practitioners of media and journalism reflect on the ways in which enduring memories of individual and collective violence, loss and grief are preserved, transformed, and updated within the context of the ongoing genocide and decades of oppression. By exploring the intersections between individual memory, collective memory, identity, and witnessing, this panel seeks to understand and bring to the fore how Palestinians navigate ongoing trauma and sustain their communities’ experiences in public discourse, while nurturing resistance in the pursuit of justice through practices of documentation, storytelling, and critical media work.

Speakers

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian author, historian, and academic whose work focuses on Palestinian history, liberation, and people’s history. He has written eight books.  His latest book, ‘Before the Flood,’ was published by Seven Stories Press. Other books include Searching Jenin, The Second Palestinian Intifada, My Father Was a Freedom Fighter, The Last Earth, These Chains Will Be Broken, and Our Vision for Liberation – co-edited with Ilan Pappé. His forthcoming book is Gaza Rising, also co-edited with Ilan Pappé. Baroud holds a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and has taught mass communication at Curtin University. He is a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Istanbul Zaim University. His academic contributions extend to numerous books and journals, and he has lectured at leading universities worldwide. His work has been translated into multiple languages.

Dina Matar is a British-Palestinian scholar whose work bridges political communication, global media and cultural communication, diasporic studies, social movements and memory, in and beyond the Middle East. In 2005, she joined the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and is chair, Department of Media Studies. She served as chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies between 2018 and end 2024. Trained at the LSE (PhD in Media & Communications and MSc. Comparative Politics), Matar previously practiced journalism in London, Bahrain, Beirut, Cairo, Hong Kong, and Palo Alto, and taught at LSE and City University. Matar is author of What it Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood (2010) and co-author of The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication (2012). Her edited and co-edited volumes include Narrating Conflict in the Middle East (2013), Gaza as Metaphor (2016), Producing Palestine (2024) and Archiving Gaza in the Present (2025). Matar is co-editor of the SOAS Palestine Book Series and the Political Communication and Media Practices in the MENA series. She co-founded and co-edited the Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication and serves the editorial collective of Communication, Culture & Critique journal. Matar is the author of peer-reviewed articles and chapters.

Session 2: A Future without an Aftermath: Nakba Memory, Justice, and Self-Determination

Time: April 30, 2026, Thursday, 16.00-17.30 CET (4.00-5.30 pm UTC)

Moderators: Yazan Abu-Jbara, Rosanne Kennedy, Doron Eldar

Focus: Imagining the future is an integral part of remembering the past. For Palestinians, the Nakba is a foundational and ongoing past: a catastrophe that is persistent and unresolved. In that sense, the genocide in Gaza is not an isolated incident but part of a longer trajectory going back to the Nakba and even before. This trajectory raises questions about possible future imaginaries: What does future imagination look like when the ‘past’ has not yet passed? How can one project a future when oppression and injustice are ongoing? What kinds of futurities become possible -or impossible- when the genocide in Gaza is situated within the long history of the Nakba and occupation?

In this panel, leading Palestinian scholars in the fields of law, political science, and cultural studies will address these questions by reflecting on the role of ongoing memories and future imagination in shaping themes of identity, justice and self-determination.

Speakers

Wadie Said is the Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law at the University of Colorado School of Law, where he teaches classes in Criminal Law and Procedure, International Criminal Law, and a seminar in Advanced Criminal Justice. He has written many articles on the nexus of criminal law, counterterrorism, international law and immigration law, and is the author of Crimes of Terror (2015 Oxford University Press, 2018 paperback with updated preface), the first full-length study of American terrorism prosecutions. He is currently at work on a book on the Palestinian cause in the view of American law, which is under contract with Princeton University Press. He is a member of the American Law Institute and a former assistant federal public defender.

Dana El Kurd is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Richmond and a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC. Her research explores the intersections of authoritarianism, popular mobilization, and state–society relations in the Arab world, with a particular focus on Palestine and the broader dynamics of colonial control and external intervention. Drawing on mixed methods and extensive fieldwork, El Kurd examines how institutions of governance—both local and international—shape political behavior, perceptions of legitimacy, and prospects for resistance. She is the author of Polarized and Demobilized: Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine (Oxford University Press, 2020), a landmark study that analyzes how authoritarian legacies and international actors have fragmented Palestinian political life. Her work has appeared in leading academic journals and public platforms, including Financial Times, The Nation, The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and more. El Kurd serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Palestine Studies and the Board of Directors of Jewish Currents.

Elia Ayoub is a UK-based researcher, writer, and podcaster exploring political ghosts and the legacies that refuse to be buried. He holds a PhD in Cultural Analysis from the University of Zurich, where he studied hauntings and temporalities in postwar Lebanese cinema, and an MA in Cultural Studies from SOAS University of London, where he studied the 20th century political history of Yiddish and Hebrew. His work spans cultural studies, history, and political philosophy, with writings featured in Al Jazeera, New Lines, 972Mag, New Internationalist and Shado Magamong others. Elia hosts The Fire These Times podcast and runs the Hauntologies newsletter.