Lena Meari
Assistant Professor
Department of Social and Behavioral Science
Institute of Women Studies- Acting Director
Birzeit University
Lena Meari, born in Haifa to a refugee family from Al-Birweh village. Integrated in her academic training and research various disciplines including: Anthropology, Psychology as well as Gender Studies and Development. Worked in teaching and research at Birzeit University and the University of California, Davis. After completing her PhD she spent a semester in the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University working on developing her PhD dissertation titled “Sumud: A Philosophy of Confronting Interrogation” which investigates the transforming colonial relations in colonized Palestine from the perspective of the interrogation-encounter.
Research Interests
Has special interest in the geopolitics of knowledge production, decolonized methodologies, colonial structures and colonial relations, the politics of sumud, revolutionary subjectivity, anti-colonial feminist theory, and critical approaches to the concept of development with emphasis on Palestine and the Arab World.
Education
PhD Cultural Anthropology, University of California-Davis (2011)
MA Anthropology (2006); Gender, Law and Development (2005); Clinical Psychology (2003)
BA Psychology and Interdisciplinary Studies (1996)
Department of Social and Behavioral Science
Institute of Women Studies- Acting Director
Birzeit University
Lena Meari, born in Haifa to a refugee family from Al-Birweh village. Integrated in her academic training and research various disciplines including: Anthropology, Psychology as well as Gender Studies and Development. Worked in teaching and research at Birzeit University and the University of California, Davis. After completing her PhD she spent a semester in the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University working on developing her PhD dissertation titled “Sumud: A Philosophy of Confronting Interrogation” which investigates the transforming colonial relations in colonized Palestine from the perspective of the interrogation-encounter.
Research Interests
Has special interest in the geopolitics of knowledge production, decolonized methodologies, colonial structures and colonial relations, the politics of sumud, revolutionary subjectivity, anti-colonial feminist theory, and critical approaches to the concept of development with emphasis on Palestine and the Arab World.
Education
PhD Cultural Anthropology, University of California-Davis (2011)
MA Anthropology (2006); Gender, Law and Development (2005); Clinical Psychology (2003)
BA Psychology and Interdisciplinary Studies (1996)
less
Related Authors
Interests
Uploads
Papers by Lena Meari
to analysing Arab (Third world) women, there is a lack of literature that
focuses on the methodological and epistemological perspectives that
contribute to the reproduction of orientalist-colonialist perspectives. This
paper attempts to consider the possibilities that decolonial feminist
methodologies can open up for exceeding this predicament, thus inviting
further reflections on how decolonial feminist methodologies might be
applied in scholarship by and on Arab women’s struggles against the
interconnected formations of patriarchy, war and settler colonialism in the
region. It asks: what epistemological and methodological approaches and
methods are required and can enable us to produce decolonial feminist
knowledges that expose how interlocking modern power/coloniality shape
women’s lived experiences in order to facilitate its transformation? How can
decolonial feminist knowledge production also be rethought as a process of
collaboration with women who resist these material conditions?
The paper argues that the hegemony of liberal feminist approaches and the
methodologies connected with them further the reproduction of the
coloniality of power in the real social world and in the knowledge production
on this social world. It offers examples from reports published by
international organisations on Syrian women which reflect the limitations of overlooking structural forces that condition Syrian women’s realities. The
paper provides preliminary suggestions to think through and develop
decolonial feminist methodologies that relink the decolonisation of
knowledge production to practices that aim at decolonisation and the
transformation of material structures of power.
Books by Lena Meari
to analysing Arab (Third world) women, there is a lack of literature that
focuses on the methodological and epistemological perspectives that
contribute to the reproduction of orientalist-colonialist perspectives. This
paper attempts to consider the possibilities that decolonial feminist
methodologies can open up for exceeding this predicament, thus inviting
further reflections on how decolonial feminist methodologies might be
applied in scholarship by and on Arab women’s struggles against the
interconnected formations of patriarchy, war and settler colonialism in the
region. It asks: what epistemological and methodological approaches and
methods are required and can enable us to produce decolonial feminist
knowledges that expose how interlocking modern power/coloniality shape
women’s lived experiences in order to facilitate its transformation? How can
decolonial feminist knowledge production also be rethought as a process of
collaboration with women who resist these material conditions?
The paper argues that the hegemony of liberal feminist approaches and the
methodologies connected with them further the reproduction of the
coloniality of power in the real social world and in the knowledge production
on this social world. It offers examples from reports published by
international organisations on Syrian women which reflect the limitations of overlooking structural forces that condition Syrian women’s realities. The
paper provides preliminary suggestions to think through and develop
decolonial feminist methodologies that relink the decolonisation of
knowledge production to practices that aim at decolonisation and the
transformation of material structures of power.