Afaf Jabiri

Dr Afaf Jabiri is a Senior Lecturer and the Co-Director of the Centre for Social Justice and Change at the University of East London. Before joining UEL in 2017, she held posts at the Centre for Gender Studies, SOAS, and the Gender Institute at the LSE.

For the past ten years, Dr Jabiri has led and contributed to interdisciplinary research projects, delivered undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in the areas of sociology, international development, gender studies, humanitarianism, postcolonial studies, forced and diaspora studies, supervised and contributed to doctoral training and published academic as well as policy-oriented research.

Dr Jabiri joined academia after 17 years of work on issues related to gender equality, humanitarianism, refugees and migrants’ rights, peace, conflict resolution and transitional justice in the Arab region.

She is a leading feminist activist in Jordan and across the Arab region, advocating for equality and social justice across the region. She publishes in both English and Arabic languages.

RESEARCH
Dr Jabiri’s research combines academic and impact-based research for policy reform and change. She takes an interdisciplinary approach in such studies, linking sociology, history, anthropology, international relations and law in her scholarship. Jabiri’s first book, Gendered Politics of Law in Jordan: Guardianship over Women (2016), examines the state as a gender regime and the historical representation of colonial and neoliberal politics in women’s lived realities of the concept of wilaya (guardianship).

Her recent book-entitled Palestinian Refugees women from Syria to Jordan: Decolonising the Geopolitics of Displacements is based on four years of field research in Palestinian camps in Jordan––and including interviews with Palestinian refugee women, aid workers, and representatives of international organisations and NGOs in Jordan. The book examines the experiences of Palestinian women from Syria displaced to Jordan, embroiled between settler colonialism, militarism, nationalism, global refugee governance, and gender regimes subjecting them to multiple forms of structural, gender-based violence.

To expose the history and geopolitics of intersecting oppressive systems working through and upon Palestinian refugee women's gendered bodies in humanitarian settings, the book argues for feminist analysis of the epistemic, settler- colonial violence of anti-Palestinianism, as well as highlights how local women’s groups and frontline workers attempt to fill service gaps. Using a rich theoretical lens to understand women's experiences in refugee camps, this book attempts to decolonise issues around migration, displacement, refugees, and women.

Dr Jabiri has also undertaken research and developed impact case studies that contributed to both knowledge production and policy reform around development issues related to gender equality, gender-based violence during war and conflict in the context of Libya, Syria, Palestine and Yemen. She contributed to several global interdisciplinary action-oriented research projects related to global inequalities and gender-based violence.

Current research:
Dr Jabiri’s current research involves working on a research project on the Silence and Gender-based Sexual Violence (GBSV) during War and Conflict.

The project aims to offer a comprehensive multi-level, interdisciplinary and gender approach to the understanding of GBSV and the silence around it in six countries: Sudan, Yemen, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, and Lebanon. This aims to fill the knowledge gap between academic research and policy-based research pertaining to the context in which GBSV and rape occur and the factors that lead to women's silence and lack of reporting or disclosure. The project will establish a network of academic and non-academic members who are experts in different conflict and emergency settings contexts, with a long history and experience of working on the issue of rape and sexual violence in the contexts of Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, and Sudan, in addition to academic institutions from the Global North, Britain, USA and Belgium.