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.
Remi Kanazi
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Remi Kanazi is a poet, writer, and editor. He is the author of Poetic Injustice: Writings on Resistance and Palestine and the editor of Poets For Palestine. His political commentary has been featured by news outlets throughout the world, including Al Jazeera English, GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and BBC Radio. He is a recurring writer in residence and advisory board member for the Palestine Writing Workshop and he is on the organizing committee of USACBI (the US Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel).
Randa Farah
Randa Farah is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Ontario, Anthropology Department. Dr. Farah has written on Palestinian popular memory and reconstructions of identity based on her fieldwork in a refugee camp in Jordan. She was a Research Associate at the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain (CERMOC), in Jordan, where she conducted research on Palestinian refugees and the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). She held different positions as Visiting Fellow and an Associate Researcher at the Refugee Studies Center (RSC) at the University of Oxford.
Randa Wahbe
Al-Shabaka Member Randa Wahbe is a graduate student in anthropology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on how Palestinian dead bodies are exploited by the Israeli state to facilitate its settler-colonial expansion. She also holds an M.P.H. in Epidemiology from the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and a B.A. in International Development from the University of California, Los Angeles, and is a founder of Students for Justice in Palestine at both universities.
