Thanks to the generosity of the Atkin Foundation, ICSR offers young leaders from Israel and the Arab world the opportunity to come to London for a period of four months, producing a research paper as the result of their work. The purpose of the fellowship is to provide young leaders from Israel and the Arab world with an opportunity to develop their ideas on how to further peace and understanding in the Middle East through research, debate and constructive dialogue in a neutral political environment.
Jana Boulus was the Palestinian Atkin Fellow for Spring 2015. She has worked at Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel and in the video department of B’Tselem, The Israel/Palestine office of Human Rights Watch and Seeds of Peace. Born and raised in East Jerusalem, she obtained her BA from Haifa University with a double degree in English Literature and General Fine Arts and her MSc from the University of Edinburgh in English Literature and Modernity.
As a Palestinian artist Jana has first-hand experience of the art that is being produced by other female Palestinian artists. In her paper she has chosen to acknowledge the artistic ways some of these women are resisting the Israeli occupation and using it to push through the boundaries of a Palestinian patriarchal society.
