Dr. Habib Sadek is an architect and academic specializing in the rehabilitation and management of built heritage. He holds a Ph.D. in Urban Heritage Rehabilitation from the Lebanese University (2019), a specialization in the restoration of historic sites from ICCROM in Rome (1992–1993), and a degree in architecture from the Higher Institute of Architecture and Civil Engineering in Sofia, Bulgaria (1991). With extensive professional experience in architectural design, urban planning, and heritage restoration, he has led and participated in numerous projects across Lebanon and the Arab region. He served as President of the Architects Association at the Order of Engineers and Architects in Beirut (2012–2016), and since 2016, he has headed the Jadaliyya Foundation for Architecture and Society. He also coordinates the Beirut Urban Declaration Follow-up Committee (since 2020) and The National Initiative for Confronting the Impact of Israeli Aggression on Lebanon (2024). He has been an assistant professor at the Lebanese University since 2010.

Mariam Hariri is a senior Organizational Effectiveness and Quality Systems Consultant with over 16 years of leadership experience in Lebanon’s public sector. She currently serves as Head of General Management Service and Quality Manager at Regie Libanaise des Tabacs et Tombacs, where she led the implementation of multiple ISO standards, launched the institution’s sustainability strategy, and oversaw transformative initiatives in communication, branding, and digital archiving. She is also known for spearheading cultural heritage projects such as The Golden Era historical book and the Manchar Sowar photo archive. A Harvard-trained executive (PLD), she holds a Master’s in Information Science from the Lebanese University and certifications in project management, supply chain, and ISO auditing.

Amani Rammal holds a Master’s degree in Archival Science from the Faculty of Information at the Lebanese University. She specializes in archiving and oral history, with over ten years of experience in collecting oral histories. She has trained institutions, activists, and university students to develop documentation and oral history projects across Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen. She is the founder of the Withaqiyya Archival Initiative. Withaqiyya is an archival initiative launched in 2017, rooted in a graduation project originally submitted in 2008 as part of the requirements for a Bachelor's degree in Archival Science at the Faculty of Information, Lebanese University. The initiative focuses on collecting archival materials related to the themes of occupation and resistance from the private collections of Lebanese families (family archives), with the goal of preserving them and making them accessible to researchers and the broader public. Wathiqiyya also promotes awareness of the significance of archives and family memory as essential sources for writing history from below—particularly in the face of ongoing efforts to erase, marginalize, or distort Lebanon’s legacy of resistance to Israeli occupation and aggression since 1948.

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. Fatme 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.

Hanin Alamsi is an engineer and researcher, working as the Executive Director of the Eyes on Heritage Foundation for Studies, Research, and Publishing in Gaza. She also serves as a consultant in the field of cultural heritage and holds a Master's degree in Middle Eastern Studies and a Master's degree in Restoration.

Basma Chebani is an Associate University Librarian for Cataloging and Metadata Services, American University of Beirut Libraries, has had long experience in implementing library systems and automating the library catalog, beginning with the MARC 21 format, introducing RDA, and adapting the Dublin core format for the libraries’ digital collections. Basma is involved in most digitization projects at the University Libraries: Arabic Collections Online, from 2012; Building up the Palestinian Oral History Thesaurus (POHA), from 2014; and Al Adab Magazine Archives, 2014-2017.

Dr. Rami Zurayk is currently a Professor of Ecosystem Management at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture at the American University of Beirut. Dr. Zurayk served as Interim Director at the Palestine Land Studies Center at the American University of Beirut (2022-2024). During his tenure, he worked on significant projects, including the Fighting Erasure initiative. Beyond regional initiatives, he has global influence as a member of the Steering Committee of the High-Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security. He also served as a commissioner on the EAT-Lancet Commission on sustainable diets from sustainable food systems. He currently advises the National Convener for Food Systems in Lebanon. Dr. Zurayk has a considerable body of work and publications focused on the Arab World, particularly examining the political ecology of Arab food security focusing on its spatial dimension. He has published extensively on food security, including works on Gaza and on "Farming Palestine for Freedom" as well as extensively on issues pertaining to land use, food security and sovereignty, sustainable agriculture, and water and food systems during conflict. For two years, he was the lead researcher on the UN-HABITAT program on Land and Conflict in the Arab Region. He is a founding member of the Arab Food Sovereignty Network, which focuses on issues of food sovereignty in the Arab World, and is a contributor to Al Shabaka, the Palestine Policy Network.

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.

Zaynab Nemr is currently pursuing an MSc in Information Management from the Lebanese University, alongside an MSc in Environmental Geoscience and an MSc in Sustainable Blue Growth, jointly offered by the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS) and the University of Trieste. She is a researcher at the American University of Beirut, where her work focuses on mapping the dynamics of settler colonial land dispossession in Palestine. Between April 15, 2023, and May 15, 2024, she served as an archivist at the Palestine Land Studies Center at AUB, where she also held the role of GIS expert. During this time, she led multiple mapping projects, including a detailed analysis of the Israeli destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure. This project involved classifying impacted sites—including schools, hospitals, and cultural heritage landmarks—using advanced polygon destruction data to precisely catalog affected locations. Her research contributions include the publication “The Environmental Impact of Single-Use Plastics in Lebanon's Tourism Sector” published in the Journal of Ecology and Natural Resources, and “Water as a Weapon: Gaza’s Struggle for Clean Water and Sanitation Amid War”, currently under review.

Dr. Jamila Ghaddar is a Lebanese feminist, archivist, historian, and educator. She is Assistant Professor in Archival Information & Digital Humanities at the Media Studies Department at the University of Amsterdam, and Founding Director of the Archives & Digital Media Lab (ADML). She is Chair of the Middle East Librarians Association’s Archives & Records Management Training & Advocacy Group; a member of the Association of Canadian Archivists’ Indigenous Matters Committee; co-convenor of Documentary Nakba: A Reading Group for Archival Liberation in & beyond Palestine; and co-host of Archives & Heritage in Palestine. Previously, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow working with Raymond Frogner at the National Center for Truth & Reconciliation and Dr. Greg Bak at the History Dept. at the University of Manitoba. Her publications appear in Archival Science; Library Quarterly; Archivaria; Displaced Archival Heritage (2023, Routledge); Research Methods: Diversifying and Decolonizing Research (2024, SAGE); Briarpatch; Al-Akhbar. Ghaddar has led and collaborated on archival initiatives and information projects in sites around the world, including at AUB’s Jafet Library archiving the personal papers of the Arab intellectual who coined the term “Nakba”, Dr. Constantine Zurayk; and at the Centre of Memory in Johannesburg preserving the papers of the antiapartheid hero, Nelson Mandela.

Tamara Rayan is a PhD candidate in the School of Information at the University of Michigan, specializing in Archives and Digital Curation. She received her MI in Information Studies and MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of Toronto. Her research is focused on deconstructing how colonialism operates through archival infrastructures as well as how to build transformative archival representations of those in diaspora. Specifically, she is interested in how to better serve and represent the recordkeeping needs of Palestinians with unique intergenerational traumas, impacted by forced migration, displacement, and exile. She is an Anti-Racist Digital Research Fellow at the University of Michigan, a former steering committee member of the SAA Archivists and Archives of Color section, and a former ARL/SAA Mosaic Fellow. Her research has been published in Across the Disciplines and Archival Science. https://www.tamrayan.com/