The Historical Legacy of the Balfour Declaration

The Historical Legacy of the Balfour Declaration: Roundtable

2 November 2017 | The British Legacy in Palestine: Balfour and Beyond conference

On the centenary of the actual date of that fated letter which redirected the history of the region, this mini-conference will subject it to intense scrutiny. Keynote from Avi Shlaim (Oxford University) and two roundtables with speakers: Rema Hammami (Birzeit), Steven Wagner (Brunel), Salim Tamari (Institute of Palestine Studies), Roberto Mazza (Limerick), Raja Shehadeh (independent writer), Rana Barakat (Birzeit), Jacob Norris (Sussex), and Lauren Banko (Manchester).

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Speakers information

Raja Shehadeh is a Palestinian lawyer and writer who lives in the Ramallah refugee camp. He is a founder of the pioneering, nonpartisan human rights organization Al-Haq, an affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists, and the author of several books about international law, human rights, and the Middle East.

Rana Barakat is an assistant professor of history at Birzeit University in Palestine. Her research interests include the history and historiography of colonialism, nationalism, and cultures of resistance. She is currently working on a book monograph titled "Lifta and Resisting the Museumification of Palestine: Indigenous History of the Nakba," which advances an indigenous understanding of time, space, and memory in Palestine by focusing on the details of the people and place of Lifta village over time.

Jacob Norris is Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern History and Co-Director of the Middle East and North Africa Centre at Sussex (MENACS). Jacob's research looks at the social and cultural history of Palestine in the 19th and 20th century with a particular focus on the flows of Palestinian migrants in this period, especially to Latin America. His monograph, 'Land of Progress: Palestine in the Age of Colonial Development, 1905-1948' was published in 2013 by Oxford University Press. From 2017-19 he is the holder of an AHRC Leadership Fellowship titled 'Merchants and Miracles: Global Circulations and the Making of Modern Bethlehem'. The Fellowship is producing a digital archive documenting Bethlehem's transformation in the 19th and 20th centuries as a result of its residents' global circulations, as well as a monograph on the global journeys of one merchant from the town.

Lauren Banko wrote her PhD thesis on "The 'Invention' of Palestinian Citizenship: Discourses and Practices, 1918-1937", and is currently working on further publications and a book manuscript. She is a Teaching Fellow in History and a Senior Teaching Fellow in Middle East Studies at SOAS, and was a visiting lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London for 2014-2015.