Ecology and Culture in Palestine/Israel

 Event 

Ecology and Culture in Palestine/Israel

An event focusing on the ecological past, present and future of Palestine-Israel. Our panel brings together perspectives from art, literature, history, geography and heritage in order to reflect on the environmental dimensions of Zionism and the Palestinian struggle.

From the relationship between water, power and politics to the construction of identity and ecology in the Huleh wetlands, four expert speakers discuss how environmental practices are challenging colonial constructions of nature, and how art is being used to reclaim the gratuitous pleasure of the enjoyment of nature, becoming fuel for change.

About the speakers

• Dr Hannah Boast is Chancellor’s Fellow at University of Edinburgh, co-convenor of Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network and author of the book Hydrofictions: Water, Power and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2020). 
• Dr Sage Brice combines research and lecturing in human geography with a lively contemporary art practice. She is currently Assistant Professor and a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at Durham University. Her research interrogates the politics of nature, particularly in relation to queer and trans ecologies of identity. She has an affinity for watery and fluid landscapes; her doctoral work explored the encounter of Eurasian cranes and humans in the Huleh wetlands in northern Israel-Palestine and their role in legitimising a sense of belonging and connection to land as part of the Zionist nation-building project. 
• Dr Sabrin Hasbun is an Italian-Palestinian transnational writer. Sabrin believes in the extremely generative power of collective creation and action and her research focuses on collaborative practices to explore histories of marginalised groups. She has recently worked as writer, editor, translator, and trainer for several institutions around the world and published articles, both individual and collaborative, about collective creation in communities. She now works as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Cardiff Met university, specialising in writing for and by marginalised groups.
• Dr Silvia Hassouna is a teaching fellow in Human Geography at Durham University. Prior to this, she was an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Aberystwyth University. Her research interrogates the production of knowledge in relation to settler colonialism and environmental imaginaries. Recent work has explored cultural activism and ecological practices in the West Bank, focusing on the museum and the botanical garden as sites of cultural struggle.