Islam Al-Khatib (nominated by Akanksha Mehta) is a Palestinian refugee from Lebanon now in the UK since 2021; she grounds her work in feminist and anti-colonial knowledge production and the political stakes of methodology. Her project traces how knowledge is produced from and about Palestinians in Lebanon, extending outward to the wider country and region, and explores the counter-practices of research that emerge under conditions of war and surveillance.  Beyond her PhD, Islam’s research interrogates the geopolitics of technology by examining how surveillance systems and militarized AI function as reinforcing projects of imperialism. Her feminist work has focussed on organising, researching, writing, and particularly building around anti-imperialist, anti-racist, and feminist solidarities between Europe and the region and beyond. She has worked with different feminist and leftists organizations and continues to do so whenever possible.

Her blog in the series Palestine Uncensored (Verso books): “Becoming monsters: what happens when the witness becomes the defendant”, argues rightly that the focus on appealing to an international audience has moderated and censored how Palestinians can imagine their fight for freedom. Thus, she argues that Palestinians must break out of the Western discursive frameworks that police their thinking about achieving liberation.