Speakers
Speakers
Ilan Pappé
Professor with the College of Social Sciences and International Studies, Director of the Centre for Palestine Studies, and co-director of the Exeter Centre for Ethno-Political Studies. He is an Israeli political scientist, historian, and former politician. He has authored dozens of books on the topic including On Palestine (2015), The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories (2017), and The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (2006).
Nur Masalha
Former director and professor of the Centre for Religion and History at St. Mary’s University and current member of the Centre of Palestine Studies at SOAS, University of London. He is editor of the ‘Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies’ and has written numerous groundbreaking books about history, the Nakba and Zionism. His books on Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018); Palestine Across Millennia (2022); The Zionist Bible (2013); An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (2018); and Decolonizing the Study of Palestine (2023).
Francesca Albanese
Italian international lawyer and academic; United Nations Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories since 2022. She is also a Senior Advisor on Migration and Forced Displacement for ARDD, and co-founder of the Global Network on the Question of Palestine (GNQP). She authored Palestinian Refugees in International Law (2020) and the pivotal report:
Hagar Kotef
Professor of Political Theory at SOAS, University of London. She currently leads an ESRC project on torture and bureaucracy in Israel/Palestine, examining how state apparatuses enable the prolonged sanctioning of torture as a political technology. She is the co-editor of Theory & Event (2024) and has authored Movement and the Ordering of Freedom (2015) as well as the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning book The Colonizing Self (2020).
Dr. Raouf Salti
Urological Surgeon in Geneva and Founder of Children's Right to Healthcare in Geneva. Dr. Salti has dedicated himself to the wellbeing of his patients in Geneva and beyond. He has done humanitarian missions around the world with organizations such as Palmed Europe and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) and now brings children injured from the war in Gaza to Geneva for lifesaving operations through his NGO.
Riccardo Bocco
Possesses over 35 years of research experience on Israel/Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. He is the former director of the French Center for Research on the Contemporary Middle East and Research Director at the Graduate Institute for Development Studies. He has been involved in various projects, including the film project "Violence, Memory, and Cinema" focusing on collective identities. He is co-editor of the book Decolonizing Palestine - Contemporary Debates, out in September 2024.
Cyrus Schayegh
Cyrus Schayegh has been Professor of International History at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID) since 2017. Before, he was Associate and Assistant Professor at Princeton University (2008-2017) and Assistant Professor at the American University of Beirut (2005-2008). His recent works include The Middle East and the Making of the Modern World (2017), Globalizing the U.S. Presidency: Postcolonial Views of John F. Kennedy (2020), and a collection of translated primary sources:
Joseph Daher
Joseph Daher is a visiting professor at the Lausanne University, Switzerland. His main focuses are the political economy of the Middle East, Political Islam and revolutionary processes. He also provides a comprehensive view on the reality of Palestinian people and the Zionist movement's use of hard and soft power in Palestine and abroad and its role in repressing academic freedom. He is the author of Syria after the Uprisings, The Political Economy of State Resilience (2019), Hezbollah: The Political Economy of Lebanon's Party of God (2016) and Palestine and Marxism (2024).
Moderators
Julie Billaud
Julie is an anthropologist at the Geneva Graduate Institute with a keen interest in gender, law, international governance, humanitarianism and human rights. Her research examines the transnational circulation of international humanitarian norms and standards, bureaucratic cultures and intersecting processes of technocratic and programmatic changes in international organisations. She is one of the most valued professors at our institute, teaching courses on human rights, cultural politics, and the anthropology of war, colonization, and imperialism.
Alexa Rae Burk
Alexa is from the United States and currently based in Switzerland where she is in her final year of her PhD in International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Her research focuses on social movements, especially labor organizing. She is a mother to two, a Jewish Mexican American, and an activist, involved in feminist and anti-colonial movements for over 14 years. As co-founder of the Decolonial Action Network, she strives to support critical conversations on Palestine and beyond at the institute.