Scholars Collaborative Grants Program

Laura Adwan holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Bergen, Norway. Her dissertation addressed the experiences of Iraqis, specifically former professionals and employees who were forced to migrate to Jordan after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Bard College at Al-Quds University. Her research is broadly focused on forced migration and social transformations among refugees, Bedouin, and rural communities in Palestine and Jordan.

Soraya El Kahlaoui holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. At present, she is a postdoctoral researcher at the Conflict and Development Research Center at Ghent University. Her research analyzes mechanisms of dispossession and the formation of property rights in the MENA region. In particular, it provides an innovative re-reading of the dynamics of post-2011 social and political transformation in the MENA region, with a focus on Morocco, Tunisia, and Palestine. She produced the documentary “Landless Moroccans” and contributed numerous articles, such as “Claiming their right to possess – The Guich Oudaya tribe’s resistance to land grabbing,” published in the Journal of North African Studies. She is also the principal investigator of the Traab project (www.traab.com), which aims to map and visualize property conflicts in North Africa.

Youssef El Chazli is associate professor in political sociology and head of the department of Mediterranean Studies at Paris 8 University. He is currently a senior research fellow at la Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá Colombia. El Chazli is also an appointed member to the French national council of universities for the disciplines of sociology and demography.

El Chazli holds a dual Ph.D. in political science from the Universities of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Lausanne. His main research interest over the past decade and a half has been the study of contention in authoritarian contexts. More recently, El Chazli has shifted his interests towards infrastructural projects, authoritarian consolidation and the ecological crises. During his stay in Colombia, he is working on a book based on his research on the Arab Revolutions and will be invested in south-south exchanges and discussions around the ecological crises.

Nationality: Lebanese

Project Title: Epistemic Freedom and the Production of Non-western Knowledges: (Re-)Thinking from the Arab-majority Region

Bio: Ali Kassem is a Lecturer in Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He was previously a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Al-Waleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh, where he also taught at the School of Social and Political Science. Prior to that, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Arab Council for the Social Sciences, affiliated with the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut. He obtained his PhD in Sociology from the University of Sussex, UK.

Kassem has held research and/or teaching positions at the University of Helsinki, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris, the Lebanese Centre for Policy Studies, the American University of Beirut, and the Free University of Brighton, among others.

His book manuscript is titled “Islamophobia and Lebanon: Visibly Muslim Women and Global Coloniality” (I.B. Tauris–Bloomsbury Academic, 2023), and he is currently editing a forthcoming volume titled “Colonial Legacies and the Arab-Majority Region(s): From Contemporary Conditions to Alternative Futures” (Bristol University Press, 2025).

Kassem’s research is invested in anti-, post-, and decolonial critiques of Eurocentric modernity, particularly through engaging with the Arab-majority and Muslim-majority worlds and their diasporas. His research and teaching seek to be accessible, transdisciplinary, and engaged.

Nationality: Palestinian

Project Title: Surviving Surveillance Systems in Palestine: Academic Freedom under Settler-Colonialism

Bio: Kholoud Al-Ajarma is a Palestinian anthropologist, lecturer, and filmmaker specializing in the anthropology of Muslim societies. She holds a PhD in Anthropology and the Comparative Study of Religion from the University of Groningen (Netherlands), an MA in Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution from Coventry University (UK), and an MPhil in Anthropology and Development Studies from the University of Bergen (Norway). Her research has taken her to Palestine, Jordan, Morocco, the UK, and Chile, where she has explored themes such as refugee rights, migration, Palestinian diaspora communities, political ecology, and the political economy of conflict. She also has extensive experience developing and leading programs—particularly for youth and women—in refugee communities.

Nationality: Lebanese

Project Title: الاستبداد الرقمية وتأثير على الحرية الاكاديمية وانتاج المعرفة في الجامعات العربية

Bio: Nadim Mansouri is a Lebanese academic researcher involved in education and training for over 25 years. He contributed more than 30 books and peer-reviewed studies published in local and international publishing houses and scientific journals. His research interests have included the study of communication sociology, digital communication, digital sociology, as well as other thematic issues, including digital transformation and digital governance. He also supervised scores of doctoral and master’s dissertations.

Mansouri currently serves as the director of the Institute of Social Sciences (Branch 5) at the Lebanese University; he is a member of the Doctoral School of Literature, Humanities and Social Sciences’ Scientific Council at the Lebanese University and a member of the “Think Tank” Scientific Council in Lebanon. He is also on the planning committee for the Lebanese curriculum development at the Center for Educational Research and Development affiliated with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE). He sits on the Sociology Committee working on the development of the new curriculum in Lebanon and serves as well in the Academic Technical Committee of the Directorate of Higher Education at MEHE; the said body is involved in reviewing licensing and resumption applications, recognizing educational programs delivered by private universities, and ensuring educational quality control therein.

He also sits on the board of the Lebanese Ministry of Culture’s National Library and serves in the International Relations Office as an adviser to the incumbent president of the Lebanese University. He previously served as the conferences and seminars officer at the Lebanese Parliament; he is the General Coordinator of the Digital Transformation and Governance Network in Lebanon, which is a specialized CSOs network of more than 70 associations, syndicates and institutions dealing with digital transformation and governance in Lebanon and the Arab region.

Nationality: Moroccan

Project Title: البحث الحساس في العلوم الاجتماعية بين الحرية الأكاديمية والرقابة

Bio: Houda Grimli is a professor of sociology and anthropology at Ibn Zohr University in Agadir (Morocco). Her academic interest focuses on gender, power, religion, globalization, identity and youth. She has undertaken a series of sociological and anthropological studies on various topics, including: feminist leadership and the exercise of power strategies, health precarity of sex workers in Morocco, in addition to digital culture and religious identity question among Moroccan youth. 

She has published a collection of articles in refereed scientific journals and collective works, including:

• Gender and symbolic violence: women facing the glass ceiling
• Digital culture and religious identity question among Moroccan youth
• The rising feminist professional movement in Morocco

Moreover, she contributed to academic translation, translating a book entitled “Sociology: Its Subject Matter and Method of Study”, in addition to philosophical and ideological texts, namely: “Maus and Religion: The Dilemmas of Universal Rationality” and “The Theological Epistemology” by Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba. 

She also published a study entitled “Feminist agency in digital religion” and translated Erving Goffman’s book “The sociological construction of sexual identity”.

Nationality: Algerian

Project Title: Production Scientifique Féministe et Répression Académique en Algérie : Étude des Restrictions après la Décennie Noire  en Perspective Comparée avec la Tunisie Post 2011

Bio: Djaouida Lassel is an Algerian sociologist specializing in women’s and gender studies. She earned her PhD in 2018 from Aix-Marseille University, where her dissertation focused on gender inequalities in Algeria. She also holds university degrees in cultural sociology and international management. She is an associate researcher at the Institut de Recherche sur le Maghreb Contemporain (IRMC). Her action-oriented research focuses on feminism, women’s movements, and the intersections of political, social, and climate change. Her areas of expertise include associative mobilization, activism and civil society, gender and social inequalities, economic and marital violence, as well as women’s empowerment and entrepreneurship. Her recent work has explored two key issues: family solidarity among women farmers, and the relationship between gender and agroecology within farmers’ associations. She has presented her research at numerous international conferences, colloquia, and seminars, addressing women’s and gender issues in countries including Ethiopia, Senegal, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Libya, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and France.

Her publications include:

• The Hirak as a Factor of Empowerment for Women in Algeria (Revue EDAAT, 2022)
• Algerian Women at the Center of Political Reform (IRMC–Karthala, 2019)

She is the recipient of the Women’s World Summit Foundation Award (Switzerland, 2013) and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers Award (USA, 2014).