2026 BRISMES Annual Lecture: Beyond Bearing Witness: Palestine, Knowledge Production and the Political Economy of the Future
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:30 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Main Building, SOAS
- Room
- Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT)
- Event type
- Event highlights & Lecture
About this event
The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) is pleased to invite members and non-members to attend the 2026 BRISMES Annual Lecture with Rafeef Ziadah. The lecture is co-hosted at SOAS by the Centre for Palestine Studies (CPS) and the SOAS Middle East Institute (SMEI) and will be held in a hybrid format.
The current moment has generated an extraordinary volume of writing, testimony and documentation about Palestine. Much of this work is indispensable – naming and recording the conditions Palestinians are living through remains politically urgent. But there is also a need to ask what forms of analysis are required beyond description, and what knowledge production in solidarity with Palestine might mean at this conjuncture.
This presentation considers Palestine not only through the immediacy of destruction, but through the political and economic projects being assembled around it. It looks at infrastructures of regional integration, energy, logistics, reconstruction and normalisation, and at the ways these projects attempt to produce a particular future for Gaza and for the region more broadly. It asks what becomes visible when we analyse these processes together, and what forms of knowledge might help us think beyond both catastrophe and the political horizons being imposed in its aftermath.
Registration
This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Seating is allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.
Image © natanaelginting / Adobe Stock
About the speaker
Rafeef Ziadah is Senior Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy at King’s College London and a member of the Advisory Council of SOAS’s Centre for Palestine Studies. Her research examines the political economy of SWANA, with a particular focus on maritime infrastructures, logistics, labour regimes, race and gender. Her recent work addresses the genocide in Gaza, infrastructures of normalisation, energy transition, and the politics of reconstruction. She is co-author, with Adam Hanieh and Robert Knox, of Resisting Erasure: Capital, Imperialism and Race in Palestine (Verso, 2025), and co-editor, with Brenna Bhandar, of Revolutionary Feminisms: Conversations on Collective Action and Radical Thought (Verso, 2020).
Chair
Dina Matar is Professor of Political Communication and Arab Media in the Department of Media Studies, SOAS, and an advisory board member and former chair of the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS. Her research examines intersections of politics and communication in the Arab world, with particular focus on Palestine. Her recent work addresses the genocide in Gaza through epistemic violence, media and war theories, and colonialism. She is co-editor, with Venetia Porter, of Archiving Gaza in the Present (2025), co-editor with Helga Tawil-Souri of Producing Palestine (2024) and Gaza as Metaphor (2016), and editor of What it Means to be Palestinian (2010).
About BRISMES
Founded in 1973, the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) provides a forum for educators and researchers in Middle East Studies. BRISMES works to promote interest in Middle East Studies and to raise awareness of the region and how it is connected to other parts of the world, including the UK. Middle East Studies is a diverse field, which encompasses all the humanities and social sciences and reaches from the present back to classical antiquity.
The BRISMES Annual Lecture provides an opportunity for members and non-members to hear from a distinguished scholar or expert within the field of Middle Eastern Studies and is a major event in the BRISMES calendar.
