Reflections from our departing George Antonius Birzeit Visiting Fellow
St Antony’s George Antonius Birzeit Visiting Fellow and Associate Professor at the Faculty of Business and Economics, Birzeit University, Dr Amal Nazzal, completed her fellowship with us this summer. She made a great contribution to the Middle East Centre community, and during her fellowship organised two hybrid seminars, bringing together scholars in Birzeit and in Oxford.
NGOization of the Palestinian Civil Society post-Oslo: Our Community-Based Ways Out
This first seminar was delivered by Dr Nazzal and Soheir Asaad in Trinity Term. Ms Asaad is a Palestinian political and feminist organizer and movement advocate who leads international advocacy at Rawa, a community-participatory fund advancing trust- and solidarity-based approaches that return power to communities.
Drawing on lived experience, scholarly critiques, and community narratives, the speakers examined how the donor-driven NGO turn after Oslo reshaped Palestinian civil society—often depoliticizing grassroots activism, fragmenting collective struggle, and entrenching dependency on external funding under long-standing Israeli occupation and genocide in Gaza. The discussion then mapped community-based alternatives rooted in self-determination, mutual aid, and indigenous knowledge, and explored how to reclaim autonomous spaces for organizing that resist co-optation and sustain liberatory practice.
By weaving praxis and theory, the event charted actionable pathways beyond NGO-centric models toward more sustainable, rooted, and emancipatory civil society structures in Palestine.
Big Tech and the Automation of Genocide in Gaza
This second seminar in Trinity Term was delivered by Dr Samer Abdelnour, Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh Business School, and chaired by Dr Nazzal.
The lecture examined the role of major technology firms—including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Palantir—in the ongoing violence in Gaza through their provision of technologies and services to Israel’s military and leading weapons companies. Focusing on the interaction of militarized surveillance data, AI, and cloud computing, the discussion traced how these infrastructures can enable new forms of autonomous weapons and extend the reach of algorithmic warfare in Gaza and beyond. By connecting scholarship with current evidence, the seminar invited urgent debate on tech accountability, ethics, and international law.
A recording of this seminar is now available to listen to as an episode of the MEC Podcast here.
The George Antonius Birzeit Fellowship
This Fellowship was established through the generosity of Soraya Antonius in memory of her father, supports Birzeit humanities and social sciences’ scholars to conduct research at the University of Oxford.
“My time as a fellow at the Middle East Centre was deeply enriching, providing opportunities to engage closely with scholars, activists, and vibrant discussions that shaped my research perspective. I am sincerely grateful to the staff at the Middle East Centre for their warm support and dedication throughout my fellowship.” Dr Amal Nazzal
