The Palestine Lab
The Palestine Lab is a space for critical reflection and scholarly conversation on Palestine facilitated by members of the core team of the Contesting Governance platform. It promotes engagement with Palestine through an understanding of its ongoing dispossession, displacement, and erasure as part of a settler-colonial project. Rooted in academic inquiry and critical scholarship, The Palestine Lab understands Palestine as a metaphorical and physical site of contestation and social justice. Thus, it is not a neutral space but one that supports initiatives grounded in justice-oriented academic perspectives that centre Palestinian experiences and resist depoliticised framings.
As a priority area of Contesting Governance, the Lab seeks to foster open and engaged dialogue not only on Palestine but also on the role of academia and our university in relation to relevant systems of power and violence. While the term ‘laboratory’ has often been used to describe how military technologies are tested in Palestine and exported elsewhere, the UU Palestine Lab reclaims the term to reflect on how our academic freedom, scholarly responsibilities, and humanity are tested.
We welcome collaborations and initiatives with colleagues and students who share these commitments and aim to expand critical engagement within and beyond the university.
Related events:
- Keynote Francesca Albanese
- Gaza in Context
- Film Screening: The Palestine Laboratory
- Reclaiming the Digital: Stories from Palestine
- Mini-series 'The Dutch Complicity in the Gaza Genocide'
Related statements:
