Resilience, Resistance, and Sumud: Gazan Academics’ Voices across War and Diaspora

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

The GazaRISE project challenges double standards, academic silence and silencing regarding the genocidal war in Gaza. The project upholds a decolonial approach, addressing four objectives: first, to interrogate how the concepts of resilience, academic resistance, and sumud (Palestinian concept translated as steadfastness) overlap and diverge in the academic literature; second, to explore the interrelated factors shaping Gazan university teachers’ responses to war along a continuous spectrum — ranging from those who declare “better dead than fled” to those who conclude “better fled than dead.”; third, to create a multisensory installation that gathers the plurality of teachers’ responses under a single roof, generating new meanings through their assembling; and fourth, to create a digital archive showcasing Gazan academics’ stories, work and activities during wartime. Methodologically, the project includes an integrative literature review and episodic narrative interviews with 40 academics across Gaza and diaspora, alongside bricolage as an artistic method. Thematic and social network analysis will be employed. The project also builds on international and national collaborations and includes a three-month visit to University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Study of Resilience, drawing on South Africa’s history of systemic injustice as a parallel context. The project’s significance lies in delineating overlapping but contested concepts to prevent conceptual slippage and sharpen theoretical tools across education, psychology, sociology, and conflict studies. It also speaks directly to urgent policy challenges: brain drain and sustaining intellectual capital in fragile societies. Art is integral to GazaRISE. Through installation and digital archive, the project refuses to reduce academics to either helpless victims or heroic figures, instead presenting their voices in all their plurality and complexity, serving as both memory space and catalyst for cross-cultural dialogue.