Eleri Connick is a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam’s School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture. She was the PhD Fellow at Darat al Funun (Amman) February–July 2023 and a ZEIT-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius Beyond Borders Start-up Scholar in 2022/2023.
Her doctoral project, "The Materiality of Exile in Jordan and Lebanon: The Palestinian House,” proposes a radical conceptualization of home and all that it can provoke. The project posits home as a place and employs spatial imaginary to understanding the experience of exile, an opening to the material objects of exile, and a portal to the scalar and temporal relations (and memories) that emerge.
Dr Akram Al Deek is a Palestinian Writer in Exile, Activist, Literary Critic, and Scholar in Post-colonial Studies. He is the author of five books, multiple articles and research papers, in both Arabic and English on the politics of home and identity, displacement, migration and multiculturalism. He shuttles between Europe and The Middle East.
Ferat Kocak is a member of the Berlin parliament, where is the LINKE spokesperson for climate, migration and anti-fascist politics. He blogs under the dame Der Neuköllner
Mati Shemoelof is an award-winning writer, poet, activist, author, and curator. He already published eleven books both in Israel and Germany including seven poetry books.
His writing is diverse. It includes fiction, poetry, plays, articles, texts for art exhibitions, short stories, and more. His first publication in Germany was a bilingual edition of his poems "Baghdad | Haifa | Berlin'' [AphorismA Verlag, 2019].
His second publication in Germany "Das kleine Boot in meiner Hand nenn ich Narbe: Gedichte" (Parasitenpresse, 2023). In Berlin he co-founded the “Poetic Hafla” group that created literary & performances events. He also co-founded “Anu אנו نحن: Jews and Arabs writing in Berlin”.
He won a grant from the Berlin’s senate to co-curate a four-day bi-national Arab-Jewish festival about the Middle East Union: https://middle-east-union.de/en/ His artistic site: https://mati-s.com
Udi Raz is a doctoral fellow at the Berlin Graduate School Muslim Cultures and Societies. There she investigates the contemporary self-image of Christian Germany at the intersection of the categories 'Muslims' and 'Jews'. She grew up in Haifa, between Tel-Aviv and Beirut. Her work is shaped by local and global, anti- and decolonial, as well as queer socio-political movements. She has lived in Berlin since 2010, where she first studied culture and history of the Middle East and then Islamic Studies at the Free University Berlin.
Luis Sanz Jardón studied Law and Philosophy and doctorates in Political schience at the university of Kassel. He lives in Berlin and is active member for the spanish united left and of Die Linke.Neukölln..
