This autumn FIME invites you to join our special online book talk series on Global Palestine that introduces recent cutting-edge research on Palestine. The series is an open-to-all part of a university course organized by FIME. The talks consist of a presentation by the author followed by a Q&A with the audience. The length of each talk is around 1h 15 min. Registration is free and open-to-all but required at the latest the day prior to the talk. Register now (links below) and mark your calendars!
11.9.2025 16.15–17.30 (Zoom)
Dr Mark Griffiths: Checkpoint 300: Colonial Space in Palestine (Minnesota University Press, 2025)
The first talk of the series introduces the notorious Checkpoint 300, the highly securitized border facility between occupied Bethlehem and Jerusalem, as a stark symbol of Israeli colonialism that embodies larger systems of control and violence. The book explores Palestinians endure and resist under oppressive conditions and how indigenous forms of life and living are sustained, illuminating how colonial space is contested and countered, unmade and remade.
Order & read more about the book here. Dr Mark Griffiths is reader in political geography at Newcastle University. He is coeditor of Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence.
2.10.2025 16.15–17.30 (Zoom)
Dr Rhys Machold: Fabricating Homeland Security. Police Entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel (Stanford University Press, 2024).
In the second talk of the series, Rhys Machold discusses the police entanglements across India and Palestine/Israel and the efforts of Israel’s homeland security industry to advise and equip Indian city and state governments. Through a focus on the often unseen and overlooked political struggles at work in the making of homeland security, the book details how homeland security is a universalizing project, which seeks to remake the world in its image, and tells the story of how claims to global authority are fabricated and put to work.
Order & read more about the book here. Dr Rhys Machold is a senior lecturer at the school of Political and International Studies at the University of Glasgow.
14.10.2025 16.15–17.30 (Zoom)
Dr Muhannad Ayyash: Lordship and Liberation in Palestine-Israel: The Promise of Decolonial Sovereignties (Columbia University Press, 2025)
In the final part of the series, Muhannad Ayyash provides timely fresh perspective on Palestine-Israel by rethinking the nature of settler-colonial sovereignty and the relationship between land and people. Muhannad Ayyash argues that this relationship comes in two distinct forms: a settler-colonial type, practiced by the Israeli state, that consists of “lordship” over land and people, and a decolonial type, seen in Palestinian popular organizing, that he calls “land as life,” a reciprocal bond.
Order & read more about the book here. Dr Muhannad Ayyash is a Professor of Sociology at Mount Royal University.