Occupation and Surveillance in Palestine and Kashmir: A Conversation

Описание: On 25th October 2021, the Governance Programme at the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations held its second event for the 2021/2022 Dialogue Series. Four scholars Yara Hawari, Ather Zia, Toufic Haddad and Mohamad Junaid, discussed surveillance techniques used in Kashmir and Palestine as a way to draw together the shared—as well as varied—experiences of life under military occupation, whilst Mehroosh Tak moderated the conversation.

Yara Hawari is the Senior Analyst of Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. She completed her PhD in Middle East Politics at the University of Exeter, where she taught various undergraduate courses and continues to be an honorary research fellow. In addition to her academic work, which focused on indigenous studies and oral history, she is a frequent political commentator writing for various media outlets including The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Al Jazeera English.

Ather Zia is an Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department and Gender Studies Program at University of Northern Colorado Greeley. She holds a doctorate degree from the Department of Anthropology at the University of California at Irvine. She also has two Masters Degrees; one in Communications from California State University Fullerton and another in Journalism from Kashmir University. Ather is also a poet and journalist.

Toufic Haddad is a social scientist whose work focuses on the political economy of development and conflict in the Middle East, and Israel-Palestine in particular. He is the director of the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), Kenyon Institute.

Mohamad Junaid is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA). His work engages on questions like colonial continuities in postcolonial state formation, aporias of democracy and self-determination, history and memory, space and place, and visual logics of geopolitics.

Mehroosh Tak is lecturer in Agribusiness at RVC. She is an applied economist researching agricultural policies and food systems in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). She holds a PhD from SOAS. She regularly coordinates and contributes toward scholarly and public discussion on Kashmir.