Mazen Masri
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mazen Masri is a Senior Lecturer in law at the City Law School, City University London. His areas of research are constitutional law and public international law, and has published a number of articles and book chapters in these areas. Mazen holds degrees from the York University (Canada), the University of Toronto, and the Hebrew University. He is a qualified lawyer and has served in the past as legal advisor to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Mayssun Succarie
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Mayssun Succarie is a postdoctoral scholar in the Cogut Center for the Humanities at Brown University. Her research covers the Political Culture of Development in the Global South with a focus on the Arab region. She taught for three years at the American University of Beirut in the departments of Sociology, Anthropology, and Media Studies as well as the Center for Arab and Middle Eastern Studies. In 2012, she was the ARCAPITA visiting Professor at the Middle East, South Asia and African Studies-MESAAS at Columbia University. Mayssun has a doctorate in Anthropology and Education from the University of California, Berkeley.
Maxim Sansour
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Maxim Sansour is an elections specialist with a focus on electoral communications and media relations. Over the last nine years he has regularly advised election commissions in Palestine, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen. He also frequently works on media reform initiatives in the Middle East and most recently has been a communications advisor to the Libyan Constitutional Drafting Assembly. Maxim lives in London and holds an MBA from Baruch College in New York and an MA in Global Politics from the London School of Economics (LSE).
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.
Jacqueline Sansour
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Jacqueline Sansour is a writer and editor with extensive knowledge of the history, politics, and current affairs of the Middle East and North Africa. She has spent extended periods of time in the Arab world, including Palestine, Libya and Tunisia. Jacqueline holds an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from SOAS in London.
Hazem Jamjoum
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Hazem Jamjoum is a graduate student in Modern Middle East History at New York University. His writing has focused on political-economy approaches to Israeli colonialism and Palestinian elite formation, and critiques of partition-based conflict management “solutions,” among other areas.
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.”
Caroline Abu-Sada
Caroline Abu-Sada is Director of the Research Unit of Medecins Sans Frontieres Switzerland, and an Honorary Lecturer at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), University of Manchester. She has worked on food security, agriculture and health issues, and coordinated programs in the Middle East for Oxfam GB, the United Nations and MSF Switzerland. Dr Abu-Sada works include “ONG palestiniennes et construction étatique, l’expérience de Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) dans les Territoires occupés palestiniens, 1983- 2005”, IFPO, Beirut, 2005; and “Dilemmas, Challenges, and Ethics of Humanitarian Action”, Mc Gill-Queen’s University Press, 2012. She has taught political science at New York University, Paris and at Sciences Po, Lille.
