Nael Bitarie
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nael Bitarie is a Palestinian Syrian. Since 2004, Nael has been working with refugees from Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and refugees in Sweden where he currently lives. He is a Co-founder of Sawa for Development and Aid in Lebanon where he was the programmes manager. Currently he is a consultant and board member at Jafra Foundation. His work focuses on community mobilization, capacity building, and development. Currently Nael works with a number of initiatives in relation to Al-Yarmouk camp crisis.
Muna Dajani
Dr. 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. She also co-led a collaboration project documenting the story of the occupation of the Syrian Golan through developing an online knowledge portal featuring collective memories of the popular struggle that took place there.
Mona N. Younis
Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Mona N. Younis is an independent strategic planning and organizational development consultant who specializes in human rights. She has extensive experience in research, teaching, philanthropy and non-profit organizations. Mona co-founded the Fund for Global Human Rights (Washington, DC) and the Arab Human Rights Fund (Beirut, Lebanon). She has published on social movements, community development, philanthropy and human rights, and is the author of Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
Mohammed al-Khaldi
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mohammed Al-Khaldi is from the Gaza Strip and holds a Master of Health policy and Management from Al-Quds University-Abu Dis in 2012. He has been in Switzerland working on his PhD in Health Policy and Research at the Swiss TPH since September 2014. He previously worked as a lecturer and researcher at colleges and research institutes in Palestine and Switzerland and is also a consultant on different programs in development and relief, and training and research projects for the governmental, NGO and international agencies sectors.
Mohammad Abu Zaineh
Mohammad Abu Zaineh is Adjunct Professor of Economics at Aix-Marseille Université School of Economics and École des hautes études en santé publique in Paris. He has worked with UNAIDS in Geneva, the Palestine Economic Policy Institute in Ramallah and the Department of Economics as well as the Institute of Community and Public Health at Birzeit University, Palestine. His main areas of research include measurement and explanation of socioeconomic inequality; public economics and policies (applied mainly to health and the health care sector) and economic development.
Maisa Shquier
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Maisa Shquier is an activist and D.Phil candidate at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex/UK. Her ethnographic research investigates the intersection between gender, sexuality, nation, body politics and embodiment. Specifically, it examines the gendered and sexualized representations of Palestine, through a discourse analysis of the “New Historians” and the visual images of Palestine. She has 10 years of development experience with local and International NGOs in monitoring and evaluating projects in gender, disability, health, food security, water and sanitation and civil society. She has worked on policy formation on gender, disability, sexuality, masculinity, and women’s political participation in the Middle East.
Layth Hanbali
Layth Hanbali is a freelance consultant focusing on health policy. He has also worked as a researcher, public health practitioner, and doctor, volunteered as a civil society organiser, and taught on several Global Health programmes. He earned a Master’s degree in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics and Political Science and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a medical degree and a bachelor’s degree in Global Health from University College London.
Joanna Springer
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Joanna Springer is a researcher on development policy and governance reform in the Middle East. She has carried out research and worked for local organizations in Morocco, Qatar and the West Bank. Currently, Joanna is research advisor for a rule of law advancement project in the Arab Gulf. She holds a Master’s of Public Policy and Administration from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst with a focus in economic development.
Jeremy Wildeman
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Jeremy Wildeman is a Research Associate at the University of Bath’s “Department of Social and Policy Sciences” where he is carrying out research on donor policy towards the Palestinians. Previously he completed a PhD on Canadian and foreign development aid towards the Palestinians, and has collaborated on a number of past research projects on Palestinian development, economy and NGOs. He also has substantial past experience with the Palestinian NGO sector, including co-founding the Nablus-based youth development charity ”Project Hope.”
