Palestine Land Society
The PLSC owes its archive to the Palestine Land Society. Palestine Land Society is an independent non-profit scholarly society dedicated towards research and information-gathering on Palestine, the land and its people. The organization does this by:
- Documenting Palestine’s history, geography, culture, and society;
- Reviewing legal, economic, socio-political and other related issues;
- Disseminating information by publishing books, maps, and academic papers on the subject;
- Participating in all fora of events, conferences, and meetings that are concerned with the subject.
Founder and President:
Dr. Salman Abu Sitta
Nur Masalha
Professor Nur Masalha is a Palestinian academic and historian and former Director of the Centre for Religion and History at St. Mary's University, London. He is currently a Member of the Centre for Palestine Studies, SOAS, University of London. He is the Editor of “Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies,” published by Edinburgh University Press. He is also the author and editor of numerous books on Palestine, including, Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History (2018); An Oral History of the Palestinian Nakba (with Nahla Abdo, 2018); Theologies of Liberation in Palestine-Israel: Indigenous, Contextual, and Postcolonial Perspectives (2014); The Zionist Bible: Biblical Precedent, Colonialism and the Erasure of Memory (2013); The Palestine Nakba: Decolonising History, Narrating the Subaltern, Reclaiming Memory (2012); The Bible and Zionism (2007); The Politics of Denial: Israel and the Palestinian Refugee Problem (2003): Imperial Israel and the Palestinians: The Politics of Expansion (2000); A Land Without a People (1997); Expulsion of the Palestinians: The Concept of ‘Transfer’ in Zionist Political Thought, 1882-1948 (1992). Professor Masalha also currently serves as a judge on the panel for the Palestine Book Award (London).
Randa Serhan
Randa Serhan is a political sociologist and ethnographer who studies Palestinians in the diaspora. Born in Lebanon and raised in Kuwait, she was exposed to two Palestinian communities with widely disparate experiences, which led to a desire to document, understand, and explain manifestations of Palestinian identification and relationships with “host” countries. Randa conducted research in Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon before changing her field site to metropolitan New York for her Ph.D. research at Columbia University. Her forthcoming book titled, Assimilation Suspended: The Making of Palestinian Americans (under contract with Stanford University Press) was based on longitudinal ethnographic research. She is also working on a second manuscript titled, Neither Thugs nor Terrorists: Black-Palestinian Solidarity in the United States.
Mark Zeitoun
Mark’s research on environmental policy and politics follows three themes: a) transboundary water conflict and cooperation, at international, sub-national and trans-national levels; b) water policy and social justice issues; and c) urban water supply and treatment during and immediately following armed conflict. The topics are interpreted with theory from numerous disciplines, including political economy, political ecology, justice, law, politics, and hydrology. He has a particular interest in the role that power asymmetry plays, and a geographic focus on the Middle East and Africa.
These interests have been cultivated by his role as co-lead in the London Water Research Group and the UEA Water Security Research Centre, both of which take a critical perspective at international transboundary environmental cooperation and conflict, and 'hydro-hegemony'. The activities follow a professional career in water policy, management and negotiations. Mark has worked as a humanitarian-aid water engineer in conflict and post-conflict zones, including in Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Lebanon, Iraq and the West Bank and Gaza. He consults regularly on water negotiations, policy and governance for a variety of organisations. He is author of Power and Water in the Middle East: The Hidden Politics of the Palestinian-Israeli Water Conflict (IB Tauris 2008), and contributes regularly to debates through public lectures and media pieces.
Cyma Farah
Cyma Farah is a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of History at Rice University. Her Ph.D. research focusses on Lebanon during the mandate period, and her M.A project was about the Survey of Western Palestine, a subject requiring additional scholarly attention. For this reason, she is continuing her research on the Survey, and hopes to publish an article about it within the coming year. Being of Palestinian origin, she is greatly interested in the subject. Her paper on Palestinian Women in Gaza won the Balkishan Award at Rice University in May 2020.