Marwa Fatafta
Marwa is a Palestinian writer, researcher and policy analyst based in Berlin. She leads Access Now’s work on digital rights in the Middle East and North Africa region as the MENA Policy Manager. She is also an advisory board member of the Palestinian digital rights organization 7amleh. Previously, she worked as the MENA Regional Advisor for Transparency International Secretariat. Marwa was a Fulbright scholar to the US, and holds an MA in International Relations from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University. She holds a second MA in Development and Governance from University of Duisburg-Essen.
Zaha Hassan
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Zaha Hassan is a human rights lawyer and visiting fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Her research focuses on Palestine-Israel peace, the use of international legal mechanisms by political movements, and U.S. foreign policy in the region. She previously served as coordinator and senior legal advisor to the Palestinian negotiating team during Palestine’s bid for UN membership from 2010-2012. She received her J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and an LLM in Transnational & International Law from Willamette University.
Yara Hawari
Yara Hawari is Al-Shabaka’s co-director. She previously served as the Palestine policy fellow and senior analyst. Yara completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, where she taught various undergraduate courses and continues to be an honorary research fellow. In addition to her academic work, which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera English.
Tariq Kenney-Shawa
Tariq Kenney-Shawa is Al-Shabaka’s US Policy Fellow and co-host of Al-Shabaka’s Policy Lab series. He holds a Masters degree in International Affairs from Columbia University. Tariq’s research and writing have covered a range of topics, from the role of open-source intelligence in exposing Israel’s war crimes to analysis of Palestinian liberation tactics. His writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among others. Follow Tariq on Twitter @tksshawa and visit his website at https://www.tkshawa.com/ for more of his writing and photography.
Toufic Haddad
Toufic Haddad is a Palestinian-American writer based in Jerusalem. He is the co-author and editor of Between the Lines: Readings in Israel, the Palesinians, and the U.S. ‘War on Terror‘. (Haymarket Books, 2007, co-written with Israeli author Tikva Honig-Parnass) and Towards a New Internationalism: Readings in Globalization, the Global Justice Movement and Palestinian Liberation (Muwatin: Ramallah 2006, [Arabic] co- written with Ala el Azzeh.) His writings on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been featured in The National, Al Jazeera English (web), Journal of Palestine Studies, Monthly Review Zine, Znet, Counterpunch, International Socialist Review, and Socialist Worker.
Valentina Azarova
Valentina Azarova is an international legal academic and practitioner working at the intersection of power, law, and violence, with over 15 years of experience advising social and liberation movements, NGOs, international and inter-governmental organizations and governments, primarily in the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. She holds a PhD in law from NUI Galway’s Irish Centre for Human Rights and currently teaches transnational lawyering and human rights practice at different universities and is also a Research Fellow at the Manchester International Law Centre, University of Manchester. Valentina’s current research concerns practices and processes reproduction of (ir)responsibility in/by international law, and the relation between social justice struggles, accountability practices and the law.
Tamara Tamimi
Tamara Tamimi is a Palestinian born in Jerusalem. She holds an MA in Human Rights Law from SOAS, University of London, and is currently a student at Queen’s University Belfast School of Law where she is pursuing a PhD in international law and the Palestine question. Tamimi provides consulting services to Palestinian and international organizations around research, advocacy, political economy analysis, as well as program development and evaluation in the fields of gender equality, international law and human rights. Her particular focus is on the right to education, residency rights, cultural heritage, democratization, and social policy.
Tamara Ben-Halim
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Tamara Ben-Halim holds an MSc in Human Rights from the London School of Economics and an MA in Modern European Languages from the University of Edinburgh. Tamara has worked in non-profit and civil society for over 6 years, focusing on creative solutions to problems of social injustice, community mobilisation, and communication and outreach. She co-founded and led the international effort, Cycling4Gaza, for many years. She has produced several short films, including her documentary film Ain El Hilweh, which was nominated for an award at the California Arab Film Festival in 2011.
Sherene Seikaly
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Sherene Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the editor of the Arab Studies Journal, co-founder and co-editor of Jadaliyya e-zine, and a member of the Journal of Palestine Studies Editorial Committee. Seikaly’s Men of Capital: Scarcity and Economy in Mandate Palestine (Stanford University Press, 2016) explores how Palestinian capitalists and British colonial officials used economy to shape territory, nationalism, the home, and the body. She has published in academic journals such as International Journal of Middle East Studies and Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies as well as in online venues including Jadaliyya, Mada Masr, and 7iber.
