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.
Thayer Hastings
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Thayer Hastings is a graduate student at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City where he is studying anthropology of the Arab world. He holds an M.A. degree from the Georgetown University Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. After completing a B.A. from the University of Washington in Seattle, he returned to Palestine, where he carried out research and advocacy in law and human rights. Thayer worked with Palestinian and international non-governmental organizations, including BADIL Resource Center and the American Friends Service Committee. His research and writing continue to be informed by a commitment to community-led initiatives and decolonizing methodologies.
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.
Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud
Suheir Abu Oksa Daoud holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is an associate professor in the Department of Politics at Coastal Carolina University, Conway, South Carolina. She has been a visiting assistant professor at Harvey Mudd College, a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at Pomona College, and a visiting scholar at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Prior to this she worked as an Israeli Knesset member adviser. Daoud has published four volumes of Arabic poetry and literature, and her academic book, Palestinian Women and Politics in Israel, was published in 2009 by the University of Florida Press.
Samer Alatout
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Samer Alatout is an associate professor in the Department of Community and Environmental Sociology and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has published extensively on water and environmental politics in historic Palestine (1900-2010) and is now working on a book on the subject. Alatout has also published on the politics of occupation (water, the apartheid wall). Most recently, he’s been researching the state building process in Palestine. He is on the Executive Council of the International Water History Association and sits on the editorial boards of a number of academic journals, including Political Geography and Resilience.
Sami al-Banna
Sami al-Banna is Director and Chief Technology Officer, NPS Office of Innovation, North American Public Sector at CSC. He was previously director of knowledge systems at McKinsey and Company.
Salwa Mikdadi
Salwa Mikdadi is Associate Professor of Art History at NYU Abu Dhabi. She is the author and editor of several books and essays on Arab and Palestinian art and was the curator of the first Palestinian Pavilion for 2009 Venice Biennial. Mikdadi helped establish several art and culture programs in the US, the UAE and in Palestine and the first professional development programs for museum professionals in the UAE and was lecturer at Paris Sorbonne Abu Dhabi. She is a founding member of the Association for Modern and Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran and Turkey.
Rena Zuabi
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Rena Zuabi previously designed and managed development programs throughout historic Palestine focused on sustainable agriculture, rural livelihoods, and inclusive market systems for a range of community organizations, as well as international agencies and charities. Bridging her experiences in the private, public, and civil society sectors around the world, she now advocates for the researching and prototyping of social enterprise models and advocacy initiatives that create new trajectories towards durable community self-sufficiency and self-determination in local development. Rena holds an MBA, Cambridge University and a BA, UC San Diego.
Rayya El Zein
Al-Shabaka Member Rayya El Zein is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research concerns performance, media, popular culture, the political economy of leisure, and spectatorship in urban Arab contexts and diasporas.
