Mission and people

Sandra Hamrouni enjoyed a 30-year career with the British Council – as Country Director in Bahrain, Occupied Palestinian Territory, Cyprus and Algeria and Teaching Centre Director in Tunisia, Syria, Oman and Spain. Her early career was spent as a teacher in Kenya with VSO and in other teaching-related posts in Mexico, UK and Egypt. As Country Director in oPT she led education, arts and cultural relations programmes across Jerusalem, West Bank and Gaza and In 2010 she initiated and developed Higher Education Scholarships for Palestinians (HESPAL). Now entering its fifteenth year, HESPAL has enabled over 230 Palestinian academics to follow Masters and PhD programmes at UK universities.

Ahmed is a Senior Financial Analyst specialising in fixed income. In the last 17 years he has worked in a variety of global companies covering different regions around the world. Ahmed holds a BA from Al Azhar University in Gaza and an MA from London Metropolitan University. He is also a playwright, a director, and an actor, and has written and directed several productions within the UK and Europe. In addition, Ahmed is a co-founder and artistic director of Al-Zaytouna dance troupe, founded in 2005.

Aimee is CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians and has previously served as Director at Friends of Palestinian Universities (formerly Fobzu). She was formerly Head of Education at CAABU (the Council for Arab-British Understanding) and has written for a variety of publications including the New Statesman, the Guardian, openDemocracy and Jadaliyya. After receiving her doctorate in the Politics of Palestinian Literature from Cambridge University, Aimee taught at City University and at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a Policy Member of Al-Shabaka and co-founded Pressure Cooker Arts, a not-for-profit arts and advocacy organisation.

Mezna is a social historian at King’s College, Cambridge, and a Spencer Fellow at the National Academy of Education. She is currently writing a book on the history of education for Palestinians. She is a founding member of the steering committee of Librarians and Archivists for Palestine, and a coordinator of RIMAAL – the consortium on Middle East and Latin American scholarship. Mezna was the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow at the Centre for Palestine Studies at Columbia University in New York and currently serves on the Steering Committee of the Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture in Amman, Jordan.

Mazen is a Senior Lecturer in law at The City Law School, City University of London. Mazen’s areas of teaching and research are constitutional law and public international law with special interest in comparative constitutionalism, constitutional theory, human rights law and equality. Mazen received his PhD from Osgoode Hall Law School of York University in Toronto. Among other institutional affiliations, Mazen is a Policy Member of Al-Shabaka – the Palestinian Policy Network; Member of the Advisory Committee, Israel Studies Programme, Mada al-Carmel – Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa; and a member of the Legal Support Network at Badil – Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights in Bethlehem.

Helen Murray is a lecturer in education policy and co-convenor of the Higher Education Research Group (HERG@KCL) at King’s College London. Her research interests include issues of higher education, conflict and crisis in critical and historical perspectives. Before moving into academia, she worked for 12 years in policy and advocacy roles on issues of education justice with international and civil society organisations. She was Coordinator of the Right to Education Campaign at Birzeit University between 2004-2006 and a student with Birzeit’s Palestine and Arabic Studies Program in 1999. Previously a trustee of Friends of Palestinian Universities (formerly Fobzu) (2007-2012), she rejoined the Board in 2023.

William Dalrymple is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and of the Royal Asiatic Society. He is also the founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. In 2006, he was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters honoris causa from the University of St Andrews “for his services to literature and international relations, to broadcasting and understanding.”

Juliet Stevenson is widely known and respected for her extensive work on stage and screen. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts and started her stage career in the early 1980’s with the Royal Shakespeare Company. She won the Best Actress Dagger at the 2009 Crime Thriller Awards.

Professor Khalil Hindi was President of Birzeit University between 2010 and 2015. He is currently Professor of Management Science at the American University of Beirut. He was previously a professor at Brunel University for the Department of Systems Engineering. He also occasionally writes on Arab and Palestinian affairs.

Professor David McLellan is a leading scholar of political theory.  He is currently a visiting Professor of Political Theory at Goldsmith’s College, and previously occupied a similar position at the University of Kent, for the Department of Politics and International Relations.