OUR WORK

Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the College of the Holy Cross. Her work, which lies at the intersection of anthropology and feminist studies, takes Palestine and Palestinian diaspora as sites from which to explore questions of race and ethnicity, gender violence, colonialism, Indigenous politics and borders/borderlands in comparative and transnational perspectives. Her work has been published in Feminist Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Jerusalem Quarterly, State Crime Journal, Biography and Borderlands, in addition to monographs for UN Women-Palestine’s Initiative on Access to Justice and the Rule of Law, and the Carr Center for Human Right’s Policy’s Global Initiative on Violence Against Women at Harvard University.  Prior to joining the faculty at Holy Cross, Dr. Ihmoud was a postdoctoral fellow in Anthropology and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Boston University, and earned her Ph.D. in social/activist anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin. She joined the Board of Friends of Mada al-Carmel in 2018. 

A public health and international development professional with 15+ years of senior management and technical experience leading complex health and social development initiatives. She lived and worked in Palestine for 16 years and worked at prominent Palestinian NGOs including The Galilee Society, Medical Relief Society and Juzoor for Health and Social Development. As Director of the Continuous Professional Development unit at Juzoor she designed and managed several innovative health service and education models, contributing to public health policy and health systems and strengthening efforts at the national level in Palestine. She is currently a Program Officer at the Global Health Innovation Lab at Massachusetts General Hospital. Stephanie joined the Board of Friends of Mada al-Carmel in 2018 as Treasurer. 

Hani Azzam is a Palestinian-American born and raised outside of Boston, MA. His grandfather's family fled Haifa in 1948 as part of al-Nakba. After completing his undergraduate studies at Tufts University, Hani spent a year working in Palestine. He returned to the Boston area at the end of 2016, and joined an early stage travel tech startup called Freebird. in 2021, Capital One acquired Freebird, and became Hani's employer.

Outside of his day job, Hani's remained connected with Palestine, the Palestinian-American community, and the broader Arab world, namely by launching both Habibi Worldwide, an e-commerce brand that supports Palestinian and Syrian entrepreneurship, as well as StartMENAUp, a blog that shares inspiring stories of Arab entrepreneurship. He joined Friends of Mada in 2017.

Kate Rouhana is a writer, editor, and communications specialist. She has written and edited widely about Palestine and the Middle East generally, past and present. Currently she serves as the Director of the Jerusalem Story Project. She holds an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and she is fluent in Arabic and Hebrew. She was a founding member of the Board of Friends of Mada in 2009.

Nadim Rouhana is Professor of International Affairs and Conflict Studies and Director of the International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Prior to joining Fletcher, Dr. Rouhana was the Henry Hart Rice professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University. He was a co-founder of the Program on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution at Harvard's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, where he co-chaired the Center's seminar on International Conflict Analysis and Resolution from 1992–2001. Dr. Rouhana was also the founding director at the Mada al-Carmel–Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa, a position he held from 2000–2020.

Dr. Rouhana has published extensively on conflict and on Palestine. Specifically, his work focuses on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israeli and Palestinian societies, the dynamics of protracted social conflict, collective identity and democratic citizenship in multi-ethnic states, settler colonialism, and questions of reconciliation and transitional justice. Another area of focus is the fusion between nationalism and religion. His books include When Politics Are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious Claims and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); Israel and Its Palestinian Citizens: Ethnic Privileges in the Jewish State (Cambridge University Press, 2017); and Palestinians in an Ethnic Jewish State: Identities in Conflict (Yale University Press, 1997). 

Dr. Rouhana was a founding member of the Board of Friends of Mada in 2009. 

Leila Farsakh is an associate professor and department chair. She is the author of Palestinian Labor Migration to Israel: Labour, Land and Occupation (London: Routledge, second edition, 2012) and has published on questions related to the political economy of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, alternative to partition, and international migration in a wide range of academic journals, including the Middle East Journal, the European Journal of Development Research, Ethnopolitics, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Journal of Palestine Studies and Le Monde Diplomatique. Dr. Farsakh has also worked with a number of international organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris. Since 2008, she has been a senior research fellow at the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University, in the West Bank. In 2001, she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She was a founding member of the Board of Friends of Mada in 2009 and served as its President from 2009-2019.