PARC - Palestinian American Research Center

Mission

Donations & Membership

Fellowship Program
for U.S. Citizens

Fellowship Program
for Palestinians

Faculty Development Seminar

PARC Fellows

Getty Fellowships

Peter Gubser Research Fellowship

PARC Panels at MESA

Conferences & Seminars

Who We Are

Directors

PARC Executive Director: Penelope Mitchell
Penelope Mitchell has worked as a consultant in international development for 17 years. Her activities have centered on conceptualizing and writing large grant proposals for training programs in developing countries. The most recent projects include bringing Diaspora Sudanese back home to train colleagues in education and medical fields, ongoing work in Palestine to develop higher education initiatives, activities in Armenia to revitalize the countryside through programs centered on youth, and a worldwide initiative in democracy training. She spent several months over the last two years in Iraq working on a massive program to reconceptualize and revitalize the country's education system. Prior to her work as an independent consultant, she spent 10 years at the Academy for Educational Development managing human resource development activities in Botswana, Swaziland, India, Honduras and the Caribbean. She worked in financial management for Education Development Center, was logistics coordinator in Kenya for Earthwatch, and served as a department office manager at New York University. She also owned and operated a restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts for five years. She has an M.A. from New York University in TESOL, a B.A. in history from Stanford University, has studied in Italy, France and Mexico, and is working on a Ph.D. in anthropology at American University. She has published and presented papers on the topic of reentry of students into the workplace after long-term study abroad among numerous other topics related to the management of training programs. She is editor of a handbook for foreign universities, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, on how to develop and manage programs for visiting U.S. students and create partnerships with U.S. universities. Married for 21 years to a Palestinian, she and her family have been frequent visitors to the West Bank.

PARC Palestine Director: Dr. Hadeel Qazzaz
Hadeel Qazzaz was born in Gaza Shati refugee camp and has lived in Ramallah since 1997. She is a specialist in education, gender and development. She received her Ed.D. from Leeds University with a thesis on adult non-formal education in developing countries, using the case of Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Qazzaz has published research reports on women's political participation, violence against women, and women's empowerment. She has recently turned her attention to gender perspectives and issues of reform and good governance, including gender responsive adaptation of the Transparency International Source Book into Arabic, research examining civic attitudes of Palestinian high school students, and helping to develop curriculum on civic education for Palestinian school children age 12-15. She also contributed to Palestinian Human Development Reports, the Palestine National Poverty Report, the Palestine Time-use Survey, and reports on the right to education in the Palestinian context. Since 1999 she worked as a program coordinator and deputy director of the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, Arab Middle East office. This enriching experience has developed her capacity in project management, monitoring and evaluation, and fundraising. It has enabled her to work closely with researchers and activists from many Arab countries and Germany. She is an activist in the Palestinian women's movement and an active member in the Palestinian civil society movement. She is involved in different types of cultural dialogue and exchange including dialogue between Europe and the Middle East. She has organized and participated in many regional and international conferences addressing issues of development, women's rights, and democratization processes.

Board of Directors

PARC President: Dr. Najwa al-Qattan is associate professor of history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. She holds a B.A. in Philosophy from AUB, a M.A. in Philosophy from Georgetown, and a Ph.D. in History and Middle East Studies from Harvard University, and is the recipient of awards and grants from SSRC, MESA, TSA, and the NEH. She has published articles on the Ottoman Muslim court, the Jews and Christians of the empire, and the Ottoman Great War in journals and books, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies and Comparative Studies in Society and History. She has also served on award committees for the Middle East Studies Association and the Turkish Studies Association.

PARC Vice-President: Dr. Rochelle Davis is an assistant professor at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Her Ph.D. is from the University of Michigan in 2002 in cultural anthropology and modern Arabic literature. Her B.A. is from the University of California, Davis in art history. She has studied and conducted research in the Arab world for over ten years: three years in Palestine/Israel, four years in Jordan, and three years in Egypt. Her research focuses on refugees and conflict. Her book, Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced (Stanford, 2010), addresses how Palestinian refugees today write histories of their villages that were destroyed in the 1948 war, and the stories and commemorations of village life that are circulated and enacted in the Diaspora. This work is based on over 120 village memorial books composed by refugees and displaced persons in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, and Davis' ethnographic research in these communities. Her book chapter "Mapping the Past, Recreating the Homeland" on the subject appears in Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory, edited by Lila Abu Lughod and Ahmad Sa’di (Columbia, 2007). In addition, she is working on scholarly articles based on oral histories she collected from Palestinians who lived in Jerusalem before 1948, and she has also published an article on British Mandate education and the Arab College in Jerusalem.

PARC Treasurer: Dr. Kimberly Katz is associate professor of Middle East History at Towson University in Maryland. She earned her Ph.D., a joint degree in History and Middle Eastern Studies, from New York University in 2001. Katz is the author of two books: Jordanian Jerusalem: Holy Places and National Spaces (University Press of Florida, 2005) and A Young Palestinian’s Diary: The Life of Sami ‘Amr (University of Texas Press, 2009), which will be translated into Arabic this year. She has also published articles in The Muslim World, Comparative Studies in South Africa, Asia and the Middle East, The Journal of Social Affairs and in the Arabic-language journal Hawliyyat al-Quds. Katz has reviewed manuscripts for The Levant; Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History; Radical History Review; Arab Studies Journal; Prentice-Hall (textbooks); University Press of Florida; Routledge; and Journal Archives de sciences sociales des religions and grant applications for ACOR-NEH and PARC.

PARC Secretary: Dr. Julie Peteet is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Director of Middle East and Islamic Studies at the University of Louisville. Her research has focused on Palestinian displacement, refugee camps, space and identity, and more recently the policy of closure in the West Bank. She has authored two books: Gender in Crisis: Women and the Palestinian Resistance Movement (Columbia University Press, 1991) and Landscape of Hope and Despair: Palestinian Refugee Camps (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). She has published in a variety of journals including Signs, American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Survival, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Middle East Report as well as contributed numerous chapters in edited volumes. Her research has been funded by SSRC, Wenner-Gren, Fulbright, the Mellon Foundation, CAORC, and PARC. She serves on the Editorial Board of MERIP and was an associate editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures.

Member: Dr. Nathan J. Brown is a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, where he directs the Institute for Middle East Studies. He has written on Palestinian politics, institution building, and legal and constitutional development. Brown's most recent book, Resuming Arab Palestine (University of California Press, 2003) presents research on Palestinian society and governance after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority. Brown also serves as Nonresident Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and was previously a scholar in residence at the Middle East Institute. In 2002 and 2003, he was a member of the international advisory committee on drafting the Palestinian constitution. Brown has also served as consultant to the UNDP's program on governance in the Arab world and to a number of NGOs active in the Arab world. Besides his book on Palestinian politics, Brown has written Constitutions in a Non-Constitutional World: Arab Basic Laws and Prospects for Accountable Government (SUNY Press, 2001), The Rule of Law in the Arab World: Courts in Egypt and the Arab States of the Gulf (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Peasant Politics in Modern Egypt (Yale University Press, 1990). He received a B.A. from the University of Chicago and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Member: Dr. Beshara Doumani is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. A graduate of Kenyon College, he received his M.A. in Arab Studies and his Ph.D. in history from Georgetown University. He writes on the social and cultural history of provincial life of the Arab East in Ottoman times; on everyday life of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation; and on academic freedom. His books include Rediscovering Palestine: Merchants and Peasants in Jabal Nablus, 1700-1900; Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property and Gender (Ed.); and Academic Freedom After September 11 (Ed.). He has edited special issues of the Journal of Palestine Studies and the Jerusalem Quarterly. For details and downloads, visit history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Doumani.

Member: Dr. Dina Rizk Khoury is an associate professor of history and international relations at George Washington University. She is the author of State and Provincial Society in the Ottoman Empire, Mosul 1540-1834 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and has published numerous articles in journals and edited volumes. Khoury is currently writing a book on war, citizenship and memory in Ba'thist Iraq to be published by Cambridge University Press. She has also served as a manuscript reviewer for Cambridge University Press, SUNY Press, St. Martin’s Press, Oxford University Press, and Westview Press, reviewed articles for Ethnohistory, International Journal of Middle East Studies, and Comparative Studies in Society and History, and was book review editor for the International Journal of Middle East Studies 1998-2001. She has also reviewed grant applications for the NEH, SSRC and ACLS, and is a Guggenheim fellow.

Member: Dr. Ann Mosely Lesch, is Associate Provost for International Affairs at the American University in Cairo (AUC), former dean of humanities and social sciences professor at AUC, former professor in the Department of Political Science and the Center for Arab and Islamic Studies at Villanova University, and past president of the Middle East Studies Association in North America (MESA). She has published five books on Palestine: Politics in Palestine, 1917-1939 (1979), Political Perceptions of the Palestinians on the West Bank and Gaza Strip (1980), Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians, with Mark Tessler (1989), Transition to Palestinian Self-Government (1992), and Origins and Development of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, with Dan Tschirgi (1998; 2nd edition, 2006). She worked in Jerusalem for the American Friends Service Committee (1974-77), supervised a grants program on the West Bank for the Ford Foundation (1977-84), and conducted research in Gaza for Universities Field Staff International, while living in Cairo (1984-87). She served as editor of MESA’s book review Bulletin (1997-99) and administered a federally funded exchange program between the business faculties of Villanova and Bethlehem universities (1994-99). She is also a member of the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East and a member of the Middle East peace education advisory committee for the American Friends Service Committee.

Member: Dr. Zachary Lockman is professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (MEIS) and History at New York University, where he has taught modern Middle Eastern history since 1995. He was chair of MEIS from 2004 to 2010 and has also served as director of NYU’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies. He served as president of the Middle East Studies Association of North America in 2006-2007 and is a member of MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom; he is also a contributing editor of Middle East Report. His main research and teaching field is the social, cultural and political history of the modern Middle East, especially Palestine and Egypt. His most recent book is Contending Visions of the Middle East: the History and Politics of Orientalism (2004; 2nd edition, 2009). Other books include Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906-1948 (1996); Intifada: the Palestinian Uprising against Israeli Occupation (co-edited with Joel Beinin, 1989) and Workers on the Nile: Nationalism, Communism, Islam, and the Egyptian Working Class, 1882-1954 (co-authored with Joel Beinin, 1987). He received his B.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton in 1974 and his Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard in 1983.

Member: Dr. Loren D. Lybarger, Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics and World Religions at Ohio University, Athens, is a religious studies scholar with sub-field specializations in the sociology of religion, Islamic Studies, and Middle Eastern Christianity. His research focuses on the effects of modern Islamic revitalization among Palestinians and Somalis in the Middle East, East Africa, and the United States. His first book, Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories (Princeton, 2007), examines the generational tensions and identity transitions that manifested following the appearance of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) during the first intifada. His current book project, supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ohio University Research Council, probes the role of Islam and its effects on identity orientations within the Palestinian and Somali immigrant communities in the United States. Lybarger teaches courses ranging from a basic introduction to Islam to more specialized seminars on political Islam and Sufism. He also lectures on social theories of religion, religion and violence, and American religions.

Member: Dr. Philip Mattar is the former Executive Director of the Institute for Palestine Studies in Washington, D.C., an independent center for scholarly research and publications, and the former Associate Editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Mattar was a Fellow at The Woodrow Wilson Center 2001-2002. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in Middle Eastern history. Mattar is the author of The Mufti of Jerusalem: Al-Hajj Amin Al-Husayni and the Palestinian National Movement (Columbia University Press, Rev. ed. 1992), and has published in Foreign Policy, Middle East Journal, and Middle Eastern Studies. He was a Fulbright scholar and has taught history at Yale and Georgetown Universities. He is a member of the advisory committee of Human Rights Watch/Middle East. Mattar is co-editor, with Richard Bulliet and Reeva Simon, of the four-volume Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East (Macmillan, 1996) and is editor of Encyclopedia of the Palestinians (Facts on File, Rev. ed. 2005).

Member: Dr. Jennifer C. Olmsted has long been interested in the Middle East and in the economics of conflict, having grown up in Beirut, Lebanon. Her Ph.D. thesis, completed at the University of California, Davis in 1994, examined the gendering of Palestinian education, employment and migration patterns in the Bethlehem area, in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war. She has held a number of positions in both academia and the policy world and is currently Associate Professor of Economics at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. She continues to focus her research on Palestine, but has also written about the Iraqi, Egyptian and U.S. economies. Her publications have appeared in a number of book volumes and journals, including World Development, Journal of Development Studies, Feminist Economics, Research in Middle East Economics, Middle East Report, and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. In addition to serving on the PARC board, Olmsted is also currently on the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the International Association for Feminist Economics boards.

Member: Dr. Charles D. Smith is professor of modern Middle East history in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona. A graduate of Williams College he received his M.A. in Middle East studies from Harvard and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan. Formerly a member of the history department at San Diego State University, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Virginia, George Mason University, Virginia Military Institute, and was the National Endowment for the Humanities Visiting Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University. He has been a member of the faculty at the University of Arizona since 1994 and formerly headed the Department of Near Eastern Studies. Smith has lived and traveled widely in the Middle East. He held a Fulbright Scholarship to Egypt and was a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, as well as having engaged in other research trips to the region, especially to Egypt and to Tunisia. He is a former President of the American Research Center in Egypt (1996-1999). Smith is the author of two books, Islam and the Search for Social Order in Modern Egypt (1983), and Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (1988, Bedford/St Martins), the 7th edition of which appeared in 2009. He has also published numerous articles and book reviews and has lectured widely on matters pertaining to the Islamic world and the Middle East.

Member: Dr. Susan Slyomovics is professor of Anthropology, Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, and director of the G. E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests are gender, visual anthropology and human rights in the Middle East and North Africa. Her publications include Clifford Geertz in Morocco, editor (Routledge, 2010); Waging War and Making Peace: Reparations and Human Rights, co-editor (Left Coast Press, 2008); The Performance of Human Rights in Morocco (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); and The Object of Memory: Arab and Jew Narrate the Palestinian Village (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998).

Palestine Advisory Board

Mkhaimar Abusada, Professor of Political Science, al-Azhar University in Gaza; journalist and media commentator, Project Syndicate and Common Grounds News Service.

Dr. Akram Daoud, Dean of the Faculty of Law, an-Najah National University; former lecturer and researcher, Arab American University of Jenin.

Anita Vitullo Khoury, Deputy Director of Resource Development Department, Welfare Association; Jerusalem correspondent for U.S. and European radio and print media; former Palestine Program Advisor, World Food Program; former consultant, Palestinian National Poverty Commission; former Assistant Editor for the Journal of Palestine Studies.

Dr. Mohammed Al-Mbaid, Country Director for International Youth Foundations; former country director, CARE International; former senior regional advisor, International Relief and Development; former Chief of Party, Civil Society and Democracy Strengthening (Tamkeen) project.

Mouin Rabbani was born in the Netherlands and studied history and international Relations in the United States and Great Britain. After working in the human rights and development fields in Palestine, he served as Palestine Director for PARC from 2000 to 2002, after which he joined the Advisory Board of the Palestine office. Currently, Rabbani is Senior Middle East Analyst with the International Crisis Group in Amman, Jordan, specializing on the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has published widely on Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict; his writings have appeared in Journal of Palestine Studies , Middle East International , Middle East Report , Third World Quarterly , The Nation , and other publications.

Mira Rizek, National General Secretary, YWCA-Palestine; former Palestine Director, Palestinian American Research Center.

Najwa Rizkallah-Khader, Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF; former PARC fellow.

Nadim N. Rouhana , visiting associate professor of international diplomacy at the Fletcher School, Tufts University, in 2003-2004, has taught sociology at Tel Aviv University since 2001 and taught in the graduate program in dispute resolution at the University of Massachusetts (Boston) from 1997 to 2001. He also co-chairs the seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard University. Rouhana's publications include Palestinian Citizens in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (Yale University Press, 1997) and numerous articles on citizenship, democracy, and inter-group conflict in edited volumes and journals such as the Journal of Applied Social Psychology .

Sabri Saidam, Director, Institute of Development Studies (UNDP); former Minister of Communication and IT; former leader, Birzeit Innovation Group, Birzeit University.

Jacqueline Sfeir , dean of education at Bethlehem University, received her Ph.D. from University of North Colorado. She has worked extensively in the field of early childhood education and has published assessments of the achievement-levels of students on the West Bank. Sfeir and Julia Gilkes recently prepared a manual for early childhood educators and trainers, co-sponsored by Save the Children (UK) and the Arab Resource Collective, based on research and field testing in Lebanon and Palestine. In 2001 she was appointed to a five year term as a member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity.