Noam Leshem

Professor Noam Leshem is a faculty member in the Department of Geography at Durham University. His research focuses on the intersection of colonial and settler colonial space, cultural and political history, war and violent conflict, cultural heritage, state violence, and Middle East/North Africa history, politics, and culture. He collaborates with displaced communities in Palestine and the diaspora to explore cultural sovereignty under conditions of displacement and exclusion.

• Current research includes Occupation Debris, funded by a large Arts and Humanities Research Council grant (2024–2026), examining cultural heritage governance in conflict zones.
• Past research includes No Man's Land, a decade-long project on state abandonment in Cyprus, Colombia, France, Palestine, and Sudan, leading to the forthcoming book Edges of Care: Living and Dying in No Man's Land (2024).

His publications span journal articles, book chapters, and monographs, with a focus on spatial critiques of conflict, memory activism, and critical expeditionary practice. Recent articles address topics such as necropolitical activism, re-inhabiting no-man's land, and spatial history methodologies.

Scientific awards include editorial board membership for Political Geography (2018) and board membership with the Royal Geographical Society's Political Geography Research Group (2015). He supervises PhD students researching indigenous material culture, settler colonialism, cultural heritage politics, and state violence.

Public engagement includes partnerships with Google Arts and Culture (e.g., Portraits of No Man's Land) and international film festival features like One World and Aesthetica.