Biographies: 

Dr. Jamila J. Ghaddar is a South Lebanese archivist, historian, and educator. She is Assistant Professor in Archival Information & Digital Humanities at the University of Amsterdam, founding director of the Archives & Digital Media Lab, and a Research Affiliate at the American University of Beirut’s School of Architecture & Design. Ghaddar serves as Co-Chair of the International Council on Archives’ Palestine/Lebanon Archives Task Force; and Chair of the Middle East Librarians Association’s Archives & Records Management Training & Advocacy Group. Ghaddar serves as a co-lead with Dr. Rami Zurayk and Dr. Hanine Shehadeh of the project, Fighting Erasure: Digitizing Gaza’s Genocide and the War on Lebanon.  

Dr. Hanine Shehadeh is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities at NY Abu Dhabi. Her research focuses on the intersections between settler colonialism, climate change, and new media. She is deconstructing the global framing of climate change and environmental justice, exploring how these issues are intricately tied to the settler-colonial reality in Palestine. Her academic work interrogates how new media landscapes can reinforce or resist digital colonialism, particularly in relation to indigenous identities and colonial subjugation. She contributes to a collaborative project with the Center for Advanced Mathematical Sciences at AUB, examining the dynamics of settler colonialism and its socio-political implications. Dr. Shehadeh earned her Ph.D. in Intellectual History from the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. Her dissertation, which explored the historical construction of the "dishonorable Jew" in European Christian antisemitism and Zionism, was nominated for Columbia University's Salo and Jeanette Baron Prize in Jewish Studies. She is also a recipient of Columbia University's Humanities War and Peace Initiative award for her work on affect formation in settler-colonial societies.

Raymond Frogner has an MA from the University of Victoria and an MAS degree from the University of British Columbia. He is the Head of Archives and Director of Research for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. His publications have twice won the Kaye Lamb Prize and the Alan D. Ridge Award of Merit. He is a recent Fellow of the ACA. In 2018, he became Co-chair of the ICA Special Committee on Indigenous Matters. He was principal author of “Tandanya/The Adelaide Declaration”, the official ICA Declaration on archives and Indigenous rights. He continues to write on matters of Indigenous identity and archives.

Dr. Ana Roeschley is Assistant Professor and Director of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Science at the University of North Texas. She is the founder and Co-Director of two research labs: the Archives Learning Lab—dedicated to investigating the relationships between people and archives in an ever-changing world; and the Computational Humanities and Information Literacy Lab—an interdisciplinary lab focused on the exploration of social and technological issues impacting human culture, heritage, and the arts and humanities.  Her research on personal and participatory archiving practices, as well as her own experiences as a refugee, led Roeschley to her role as the Principal Investigator of Records of Refuge: Supporting Refugee Communities’ Archival Needs (RoR), an applied research study aiming to close gaps on the documentary and archival needs of refugees in the United States. Through her work with RoR, Roeschley co-founded the Our Refugee Stories Archive, a community-based archival initiative to create digital collections for and by refugees, as well as openly available resources on best practices for archiving personal records for personal use.

Nigel V. Nugawela  is a trained Archivist and Records Manager focusing on human rights archiving, access to information, evidence, records management, and metadata development. He currently operates as a consultant, advising various organisations on ARM-related projects. He was a founding trustee of the Collective for Historical Dialogue & Memory (CHDM) and was previously associated with the Centre for Policy Alternatives (2009-2012), Groundviews (2009-2012), Consultation Task Force on Reconciliation Mechanisms (2016-2018), and the Strengthening Reconciliation Processes in Sri Lanka (SRP) programme (2019-2022). N. V. Nugawela read for an MA (Hons.) in Politics at the University of Edinburgh and, as a Chevening Scholar, for an MA in Archives and Records Management at University College London (UCL), where he was awarded the Sir Hilary Jenkinson Prize (2018/9).

Dr. Mariam Karim is a Lebanese-Iraqi scholar and organizer. She is the founder of the digital archival storytelling project Nasawiyyah: Arab Media History and a Steering Council member of the Archives & Digital Media Lab.  Her work explores Arab women’s anti-colonial media from the 20th century. She is completing a Global Postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Global South at Northwestern University in Qatar (2023-2026). Karim completed her PhD at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information (iSchool) and the Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI). 

Biographies: 

Fatima el Bazzal is a doctoral researcher at the Bibliotheca Arabica project (2024-). She holds a Master of Arts in Information Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts in Library and Information Management from the Lebanese University. She has extensive library and archival experience, having worked as a Metadata and Reference Librarian at the Lebanese National Library, where she contributed to cataloging, policy development, and the relocation of the library’s collection. Fatima has also participated in archival projects like the Virtual Museum of Censorship with MARCH Lebanon and the Feminist Library of the Knowledge Workshop, as well as a project on the personal library and archive of the late Professor Hassan Chalabi, in Beirut. Her Ph.D. project focuses on the manuscript heritage of the Jabal ʿĀmil region, specifically the endowed collection of Asad Allāh ibn Muhammad Muʾmin al-Khātūnī al-ʿĀmilī in the Astān Quds Library, Mashhad, Iran which was donated in the year 1067 AH/1657 AD . Fatme's research explores the provenance history of this collection, placing it within the context of the migration of ʿĀmilī scholars to Safavid Iran, who attained various academic and administrative positions in the emerging Safavid state and played a significant role in reshaping the religious identity of the Safavid Empire.

Shatha Hanaysha is a Palestinian journalist from Jenin, known for her frontline reporting on Israeli occupation raids in the West Bank. In May 2022, while reporting in Jenin as a correspondent for Ultra Palestine, she survived the shooting that killed Al Jazeera Correspondent, Shireen Abu Akleh. She earned her bachelor’s in Palestine and is now pursuing a Master’s in Media Studies at the American University of Beirut, supported by the Shireen Abu Akleh Memorial Scholarship.

Dr. Mahmoud A. Balaawy is a PhD researcher specializing in conservation legislation, with a Master's degree in Architectural Engineering focused on heritage conservation. Since 2004, he has worked at the Iwan Center for Cultural Heritage at the Islamic University of Gaza, an institution dedicated to preserving Palestinian cultural heritage

Rawan Mazeh is a photographer based in Lebanon. Her work explores the complex relationship between people and their environments, with a particular focus on the aftermath of war in Lebanon. She examines how conflict and displacement shape personal and collective experiences of belonging and memory. Since 2022, Rawan has been working as an Archivist at the Arab Image Foundation (AIF). She is currently responsible for the collections, their preventive preservation, and all preservation projects at AIF. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Photography and Multimedia from Notre Dame University, Lebanon (2018), and a Master of Arts in Photography and Visual Design from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan, Italy.

Khaled Awad is a Palestinian researcher and historian from Nazareth specializing in cultural heritage and collective memory. He is a member of several cultural bodies and author of multiple studies, including photographic records of historical Palestinian cities.

Nader Jalal Al-Bass is a researcher and music producer born in Jerusalem in 1959, Nader Al-Bass is considered one of the leading figures working on Palestinian musical heritage. He graduated from Birzeit University in 1982 and, from a young age, was active as a singer, musician, dabke trainer, and practitioner of popular arts. He contributed to founding and leading numerous musical and folkloric ensembles across Palestine. He served as Director of the Music Department and later as Director-General of Arts at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture until 2010. He represented Palestine in major cultural delegations to various Arab and international countries, and supervised the 2005 rearrangement of the Palestinian national anthem. In 2010, he co-founded Nawa for Culture and Arts with a group of musicians, initiating a pioneering research and documentation project to revive and preserve refined Palestinian musical heritage. The project focused on collecting and publishing the works of early Palestinian composers such as Rawhi Al-Khammash, Mohammed Ghazi, Riyad Al-Bandak, Abdel Karim Qazmoz, among many others. He oversaw the production of four award-winning albums of pre-1948 Palestinian music and led live performances of Nawa Group in Palestine and abroad. Al-Bass has delivered dozens of lectures on Arab music at universities and cultural institutions across the Arab world and Europe, and has authored several articles on Palestinian folk heritage. His recent book, “Palestine in the Arab Musical Renaissance – The First Half of the Twentieth Century,” is regarded by critics as the first comprehensive documentation of urban musical life in Palestine before the Nakba.