Fathi Nimer
Fathi Nimer is Al-Shabaka’s Palestine policy fellow. He previously worked as a research associate with the Arab World for Research and Development, a teaching fellow at Birzeit University, and a program officer with the Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies. Fathi holds a master’s degree in political science from Heidelberg University and is the co-founder of DecolonizePalestine.com, a knowledge repository for the Palestinian question. Fathi’s research revolves around political economy and contentious politics. His current focus is on food sovereignty, agroecology, and the resistance economy in Palestine.
Faysal Mikdadi
Faysal Mikdadi (d. 2021) was an author and educational consultant based in the United Kingdom. He wrote extensively on education, literature and Palestine. Faysal was the author of the novels Return and Tamra and a book of poetry, A Return: The Siege of Beirut, as well as two historical bibliographies on Gamal Abdel Nasser and Margaret Thatcher.
Grace Said
Grace Said is a long-time advocate of Palestinian human rights. She is a member of the Steering Committee of Friends of Sabeel, North America and treasurer of the Washington Interfaith Alliance for Middle East Peace. She has in the past served on the boards of Trans-Arab Research Institute and the Arab-American University Graduates. In 2009 she was a co-founder of Al-Shabaka and also organized a major Sabeel conference in Washington, DC.
Haidar Eid
Haidar Eid is Associate Professor of Postcolonial and Postmodern Literature at Gaza’s al-Aqsa University. He has written widely on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including articles published at Znet, Electronic Intifada, Palestine Chronicle, and Open Democracy. He has published papers on cultural Studies and literature in a number of journals, including Nebula, Journal of American Studies in Turkey, Cultural Logic, and the Journal of Comparative Literature. Haidar is the author of Worlding Postmodernism: Interpretive Possibilities of Critical Theory and Countering The Palestinian Nakba: One State For All.
Hala Turjman
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Hala Turjman holds a BA in Political Science from Birzeit University and Sciences Po Rennes, and an MA degree in EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies from the College of Europe, specialized in Security and Justice. Her dissertation was a critique of EU development aid policy, gender mainstreaming and the implementation of UNSCR 1325 in Palestine. Hala was a Schuman Fellow at the European Parliament in the Middle East Unit. She is currently a researcher at the European Institute of Peace, focusing on situations of conflict in the MENA region, mainly in Syria and Libya. In past years Hala has also taken part in a number of grassroots campaigns and community initiatives in Palestine.
Dina Matar
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Dina Matar is senior lecturer in political communication at the Centre for Film and Media Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies. She works on the relationship between culture, communication and politics, with a special focus on Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. She is the author of “What it Means to be Palestinian: Stories of Palestinian Peoplehood” (Tauris, 2010); co-editor of “Narrating Conflict in the Middle East: Discourse, Image and Communication Practices in Palestine and Lebanon” (Taruis, 2013) and co-author of “The Hizbullah Phenomenon: Politics and Communication” (Hurst, 2014). Matar is also co-founding editor of the “The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication.”
Dina Omar
Dina Omar is a writer and a graduate student studying Anthropology at Yale. She is a founding member of Students for Justice in Palestine-National and serves on the National Executive Board of the Palestine Youth Movement.
Dyala Hamzah
Al-Shabaka policy member Dyala Hamzah is an associate professor of Arab History at the University of Montreal. She served as editor of the 2013 Routledge volume The Making of the Arab Intellectual and is author of the forthcoming text, Muhammad Rashid Rida ou le Tournant Salafiste (CNRS Éditions, 2019). Dyala has published with Princeton and Oxford University Presses, as well as in academic journals including CSAAME, REMMM and Égypte-Monde Arabe. She is currently conducting a project on Mandate Palestine and Arab Nationalism. Her upcoming Palestine. Le Sionisme est-il réformable? is under contract with Presses de l’Université de Montréal (PUM, 2020).
Fadi Quran
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Fadi Quran is a Senior Campaigner at Avaaz and a Popular Struggle community organizer. He previously served as UN Advocacy Officer with Al-Haq’s legal research and advocacy unit. Apart from his work in advocacy and international law, Fadi is also an entrepreneur in the alternative energy field, where he has founded two companies bringing wind and solar energy to Palestine and other countries in the region. Fadi holds degrees in Physics and International Relations from Stanford University.
