Prof. Hanan Toukan (Associate Professor of Middle East Studies, Bard College Berlin (on leave) and Visiting Associate Professor of Philosophy, Politics and Economics, American University of Beirut Mediterraneo.)
Date: 02/12/2025
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Venue: Auditorium B, Technicum
Contact : Lisa.Franke@UGent.be; Islam.Dayeh@UGent.be
Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi
Screening of documentary “A State of Passion” in the framework of the of Palestine Cinema Days organised by the Filmlab Palestine in collaboration with UGent Palestine Talks.
a feature-length documentary by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi.
A State of Passion is a feature-length documentary by Carol Mansour and Muna Khalidi. After 43 harrowing days working under relentless bombardment in Gaza’s Al Shifa and Al Ahli hospitals, British-Palestinian reconstructive surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah emerged as a symbol of Palestinian resistance.
The screening will be accompanied by a conversation with writer and lawyer Selma Dabbagh, film director Mahmoud Nabil Ahmed and producer Frank Barat.
Selma Dabbagh is a British-Palestinian writer and lawyer. Her debut novel Out of It (Bloomsbury, 2011) set between Gaza, London and the Gulf was listed as a best book on Israel/Palestine by the Guardian in 2024. Her fiction includes short stories, radio plays for BBC and WDR in Germany as well as productions for stage (Asmahan, Sadlers Wells, 2025) and screen (collaboration on the script of Palestine 1936). She is the editor of We Wrote In Symbols; Love and Lust by Arab Women Writers (Saqi, 2021). Since October 2023 she has been writing regular blogs for the London Review of Books and has also written for PORT, INQUE, The Guardian and The Observer. A new short story Katamon will be coming published in the collection Palestine -1 (Comma Press, 2025). Selma holds an LLM in Law from SOAS and a PhD from Goldsmiths, both University of London.
Mahmoud Nabil Ahmed is a Palestinian filmmaker from Gaza, now based in Belgium. He studied directing at ISAMM and film editing at ESAC in Tunisia, where he began shaping a visual language built on stillness, memory, and the quiet details of everyday life. His short films The War Inside Us and Matchstick explore fragile moments of endurance and connection. In 2024, he directed Gazan Tales, a documentary that lingers on everyday life in Gaza — gestures, sounds, and routines that reveal how people keep living, even when everything else falls apart.
Frank Barat is a film producer, journalist and author. He has worked on books with Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Ilan Pappé, Ken Loach, Vijay Prashad and Marc Lamont Hill. He is executive producer on Annemarie Jacir’s “Palestine 36” and Kaouther Ben Hania “The Voice of Hind Rajab”. He is part of the production team of the Together for Palestine concerts, including in Brussels, Paris and London.
Date: 03/11/2025
Time: 08.30pm
Venue: KASK Cinema – School of Arts Ghent, Louis Pasteurlaan 2, 9000 Gent
Free entrance – Reservation required
This event is co-organised by Palestine Talks, CAIMES, MENARG, KASK Cinema, and Palestine Cinema Days.
Prof. Dr. Dina Matar (SOAS, University of London)
Date: 21/10/2025
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Venue: Auditorium E, Faculty of Arts, Plateau – Rozier, J. Plateaustraat 22, 9000 Gent
Contact :Islam.Dayeh@UGent.be; Lisa.Franke@UGent.be
Prof. Dr. Ussama Makdisi (University of California Berkeley)
Date: 08/05/2025
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Venue: Auditorium E, Technicum blok 2, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Gent
Contact: Islam.Dayeh@UGent.be; Lisa.Franke@UGent.be
Dr. Shir Hever studies the economic aspects of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory. He is the manager of the Alliance for Justice between Israelis an Palestinians (BIP), and the military embargo coordinator for the Boycott National committee (BDS)
Date: 25/04/2025
Time: 1pm to 3pm
Venue: Auditorium C – “Hein Picard” Campus Tweekerken, Hoveniersberg 24, 9000 Gent
Contact: Islam.Dayeh@UGent.be; Lisa.Franke@UGent.be
Prof Dr. Refqa Abu-Remaileh (Freie Universität Berlin)
Refqa Abu-Remaileh is Associate Professor of Modern Arabic Literature and Film at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany. As Principal Investigator, she led the European Research Council project PalREAD (2018–2023). She is author of Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature (Stanford University Press, 2023) and creator of the Arabic-language podcast Balad min Kalam: Conversations on Palestinian Literature available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
Country of Words: A Transnational Atlas for Palestinian Literature is a digital-born project that retraces and remaps the global story of Palestinian literature in the 20thcentury, starting from the Arab world and going through Europe, North America, and Latin America. Sitting at the intersection of literary history, periodical studies, and digital humanities, Country of Words creates a digitally networked and multilocational literary history—a literary atlas enhanced. The virtual realm acts as the meeting place for the data and narrative fragments of this literature-in-motion, bringing together porous, interrupted, disconnected, and discontinuous fragments into an elastic, interconnected, and entangled literary history.
Date: 24/04/2025
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Venue: Auditorium G, Technicum blok 2, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Gent
Contact: Islam.Dayeh@UGent.be; Lisa.Franke@UGent.be
Professor Dr. Noura Erakat
Guest lecture organised by our colleagues from Conflict and Development Studies
Palestine Talks Spring 2025Prof. Dr. Amos Goldberg
lecture organised together with our colleagues from Conflict and Development Studies
Professor Amos Goldberg’s work on Holocaust historiography, trauma, and memory studies has been highly influential, and this visit presents a great opportunity for engaging discussions. He will share insights from his research, followed by an open discussion.
Date: 03/03/2025
Time: 4pm to 5.45 pm
Venue: Auditorium D, Rozier 44, 9000 Gent
Contact: Islam.Dayeh@UGent.be; Lisa.Franke@UGent.be
Prof. Dr. Amos Goldberg
Together with our colleagues from Conflict and Development Studies, we are organising a roundtable discussion on “History, Politics, and the Genocide in Gaza”
Date: 03/03/2025
Time: 1pm to 2.30pm
Venue: Faculty Board Meeting Room, Technicum, 3rd Floor).
Registration link: https://event.ugent.be/registration/conversationamosgoldberg
Contact: Islam.Dayeh@Ugent.be
Lecture by Prof. Dr. Islah Jad (Birzeit University)
Date: 12/11/2024
Time: 4 pm to 6 pm
Venue: Auditorium C, Technicum, Sint-Pietersnieuwstraat 41, 9000 Gent
Contact: Islam.Dayeh@UGent.be; Lisa.Franke@UGent.be