Nadia Barhoum
Al-Shabaka Policy Member Nadia Barhoum is a research associate at UC Berkeley where she works on issues of political ecology and climate adaptability, data visualization, structural inequality, and spatial politics within marginalized communities. She previously worked as the coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch and as an Advocacy Officer with a local NGO in East Jerusalem. She completed her BA in Political Economy at UC Berkeley and her MA in Research Architecture from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. Nadia has been active in youth organizing within transnational Palestinian communities and is a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement.
Moien Odeh
Moien Oded is an international human rights lawyer, a research and teaching assistant, and PhD student at George Mason University, Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. While living in Jerusalem, Moien represented Palestinians in leading public interest cases in Israeli courts. His resume includes: Political and IHL advisor for diplomatic missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah; founder and manager of the legal clinic in East Jerusalem neighborhoods behind the Wall; US State Department “young leader” and participant in the State Department’s “Leaders for Democracy Fellowship” on theme of conflict resolution; fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; fellow, University of Virginia Center for Politics and Global Perspectives on Democracy; member, Al Shabaka, Palestinian Policy Network; member, European Academy of Diplomacy; “young legal leaders” of the International Bar Association; LLB, BA(Accounting), Hebrew University; LL.M from University of Pittsburgh; commentator and author Middle Eastern media (Al-Jazeera; Al Quds Newspaper; JURIST Legal News and Research) and US media.
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).
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.
