Lena Meari

Lena Meari is an Assistant Professor at Birzeit University, Palestine, affiliated with the Department of Social and Behavioral Science and the Institute of Women’s Studies. She holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology with a focus on Feminist Theory from the University of California, Davis, and previously served as the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies. Her research critically engages with gender, colonial structures, carcerality, and displacement, particularly in Palestinian contexts.

Education:

• PhD in Cultural Anthropology (with emphasis in Feminist Theory), UC Davis
• Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Postdoctoral Fellowship, Columbia University

Research Interests: Meari’s work examines gendered experiences of systemic imprisonment in Israel/Palestine, comparative carceral politics, and the intersections of ethnicity, displacement, and resistance. She analyzes how colonial structures shape daily life for Palestinians, including through studies on hip-hop culture as resistance and the socio-economic impacts of displacement.

Contributions: She co-organized panels such as Carcereral Politics in Palestine & Beyond (2012) and contributed to Displaced at Home: Ethnicity and Gender Among Palestinians in Israel, exploring topics like Palestinian internal refugees and the role of gender in nationalist discourses.