Mona N. Younis
Al-Shabaka Policy Advisor Mona N. Younis is an independent strategic planning and organizational development consultant who specializes in human rights. She has extensive experience in research, teaching, philanthropy and non-profit organizations. Mona co-founded the Fund for Global Human Rights (Washington, DC) and the Arab Human Rights Fund (Beirut, Lebanon). She has published on social movements, community development, philanthropy and human rights, and is the author of Liberation and Democratization: The South African and Palestinian National Movements (University of Minnesota Press, 2000).
Mjriam Abu Samra
Mjriam Abu Samra is a doctoral researcher in International Relations at the University of Oxford, UK. Her work focuses on Palestinian Transnational Student Movements and their contribution to the broader Liberation Movement through different political periods. She had previously completed her Masters in Middle East Politics at SOAS in London. Recently, Mjriam has been based in Amman, Jordan, where she is completing her research. She has lectured at the University of Jordan Faculty of Politics and International Studies. Mjriam has been a co-founder of the Palestinian Youth Association “Wael Zuaiter” in Rome, Italy, and of the transnational Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).
May Seikaly
May Seikaly is Associate Professor of History at Wayne State University in the Department of Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures (Near Eastern Studies). Her work has focused on the social history of Arab society, specifically Palestinian and Arabian Gulf societies. May Seikaly has been involved in the collection and archiving of Palestinian memory through the use of Oral documentation for recording, archiving and historicizing oral collections, including her book Haifa: Transformation of an Arab society 1918-1939. She is currently working on a study of Gulf Social History through the eyes of its women, and in essence again utilizing oral history as a major tool.
Leila Farsakh
Al-Shabaka policy analyst, Leila Farsakh, is Associate Professor and Chair of the political science department at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is the author of Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (Routledge, 2012), and of Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-determination beyond Partition (California University Press, 2022). She has worked with a number of organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris and MAS in Ramallah, and she has been a senior research fellow at Birzeit University since 2008. In 2001, she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission.
Linah al-Banna
Linah al-Banna is a Child Psychologist at the Kennedy Krieger Institute.
Loubna Qutami
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Loubna Qutami is a Presidents Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She has a PhD from the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Qutami is also the former Executive Director of the Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC) in San Francisco as well as a founder, member, and the former International General Coordinator for the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM).
M. Muhannad Ayyash
M. Muhannad Ayyash was born and raised in Silwan, Al-Quds, before immigrating to Canada, where he is now Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University. He is the author of A Hermeneutics of Violence (UTP, 2019). He has published several articles in journals such as Interventions, the European Journal of International Relations, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and the European Journal of Social Theory. He has written opinion pieces for Al-Jazeera, The Baffler, Middle East Eye, Mondoweiss, The Breach, and Middle East Monitor. He is currently writing a book on settler colonial sovereignty in Palestine/Israel.
Maha Nassar
Al-Shabaka Member Maha Nassar is an assistant professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Arizona. She holds a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago. Her book, Brothers Apart: Palestinian Citizens of Israel and the Arab World (Stanford University Press, 2017) examines how Palestinian intellectuals in Israel have connected to global decolonization movements through literary and journalistic writings. Nassar is also a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. Her pieces have appeared in The Washington Post, The Conversation, Middle East Report and elsewhere.
Laila el-Haddad
Laila el-Haddad is a Maryland-based freelance journalist, author, political analyst, and parent-of-two from Gaza. From 2003-2007, she was Gaza correspondent for the Al-Jazeera English website and a regular contributor to the BBC World Service. She is the author of Gaza Mom: Palestine, Politics, Parenting, and Everything in Between, named for the award-winning blog she has authored since 2004, and was a contributor to The Goldstone Report: The Legacy of the Landmark Investigation of the Gaza Conflict (Nation Books January 2011) and author of the forthcoming Gaza Kitchen. She has been published in The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, The New Statesman, Le Monde diplomatique, and has been a guest on WUNC, WBUR and CNN. She is also a columnist for the Guardian’s Comment is Free. She is a graduate of Duke University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
