Forum Starts in:
Important Dates
November 15, 2025 – Announcement of the Forum.
February 07, 2025 – Deadline for submitting all conference proposals. Proposals can include a paper on one of the themes, a roundtable, or a session. (Proposals may be submitted in Arabic or English.) Proposals for roundtables or sessions should include the list of speakers, the titles of their papers, and their abstracts.
February 15, 2025 – Announcement of accepted proposals, including those eligible for inclusion in the conference’s special issue.
March 1, 2025 – Deadline for submitting full papers/contributions to be included in the Forum.
April 23-24, 2025 – Dates of the Forum.
About the Forum
Social Work in Palestine is considered an integral part of the liberation process from colonialism. Palestinian academic institutions and community organizations, since their establishment, have sought to create local social structures that contribute to the steadfastness and liberation of society through various interventions.
Social Work in Palestine is considered one of the ways to organize the community to respond and cope with the difficult circumstances experienced by Palestinians due to living under colonialism. Social Work is not limited to providing social and psychological services to families and individuals, but also works to create alternative methods for community-based action to enhance steadfastness and community resilience against occupation policies.
Social work in Palestine does not separate colonialism from the socio-economic realities which are manifested through on-the-ground structural and daily challenges, such as policies, laws and procedures imposed by the occupation. These challenges affect the structure and cohesion of Palestinian families and the pressures they endure. These also include economic dependence on the labor pattern, wages and consumption limitations, and even choices related to where they live and interact, while the struggle over Palestinian land and space continues – affecting homes, neighborhoods, the scene and the broader community.
Colonial policies have escalated, seeking to dismantle the social fabric of Palestinian society through a number of policies and practices of spatial and social cleansing, leading to the genocidal war that is still being waged against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and to a lesser extent in the West Bank and Lebanon. These policies manifest as a clear embodiment of the core colonial ideology of annihilation and erasure, targeting Palestinians wherever they may be, and extending to every aspect of their life and survival, and include social, economic, and health institutions, housing and infrastructure, specialized cadres, public spaces, and historical and cultural structures. This reflects a continuation and deepening of the Nakba of 1948, with the goal of complete ethnic cleansing from Palestine.
Several measures were imposed, including the policy of collective punishment and apartheid policies, land confiscation, and the besieging, criminalization and dismantling of institutional collective work, in an attempt to dismantle the Palestinian society on the collective and individual levels, and adopt daily practices that “normalize” with the goals of social fabrication and reshape awareness in a manner consistent with the objectives of colonialism.
These practices have made Social Work a dynamic discipline for coping and steadfast adaptation, as the Palestinian cannot resist without the ability to cope with and respond to all the painful and exhausting losses on the human, material and practical levels. Social Work thus becomes a critical tool that transcends the individual to the collective, allowing accumulated experiences of social work to transition from working with individuals to addressing community and societal needs, as the scale of human losses is vast and painful.
This raises a uniquely Palestinian question about how to view Social Work as an attempt at Palestinian steadfastness and resistance, rooted in a profound understanding of social relationships—of the self, family, community, and society—while directly addressing the accumulated losses and aiming for continuous resilience, emancipation and liberation. This gives a broader meaning than the sacrifice and loss, opening the door to a different future for the Palestinian.
The social worker is part of Palestinian society, involved in the process of conflict and confrontation, often finding themselves in the dual position of both service providers and victims. Social workers are often exposed to a set of obstacles resulting from colonial policies and procedures, such as arrest, mobility restrictions, direct assault, closure of social institutions, and the legal framework regulating the profession. These challenges complicate social workers’ ability to promote a more just and resilient society, and increases the intersection of social action and political resistance action.
Hence, fieldwork within the Palestinian society seeks to create on-the-ground local alternatives and practices that operate within the principles of Social Work, expanding the scope of practice to encompass opportunities for action within a colonial context that addresses the individual and society at the same time. This requires expanding and developing the concepts and perspective of social work in Palestine and globally.
It is significant to note that there is a shortage of documentation regarding the development of Social Work in Palestine, and that the predominant focus is on practical applications and development while neglecting the theoretical exploration. The focus on confronting the existing political circumstances surpasses documenting the experience, building on it, and learning from it.
From this standpoint, and in light of the rich and diverse experiences and professional expertise practiced in the Palestinian society, the idea of developing and documenting the experience of Social Work in the context of Israeli colonialism emerged. This is to transform practice into theory and intellectual material that can serve as a reference for other contexts. This would give value and richness for the various roles that Social Work plays in confronting the different challenges experienced by Palestinians.
Through this forum, we aim to document and analyze the theories being used, and how they are utilized, and the practical interventions in the colonial context. We will also explore Social Work interventions that seek to liberate the individual and the community at the same time. As such, we will be inviting a range of academic papers as well as testimonies and experiences from active social work practitioners in the field.
Speakers at the Conference
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
A Palestinian Jerusalemite feminist whose scholarship on the settler colonial state’s brutality, unchilding, securitized and sacralized politics, state crime, law and society, and global feminist politics, challenges epistemic violence. She is the Global Chair in Law- Queen Mary University of London, Professor Extraordinarius- University of South Africa, Visiting Professor- Princeton University, and Professor emeritus- the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Author of numerous books among them Militarization and Violence Against Women in Conflict Zones in the Middle East: The Palestinian Case Study” (Cambridge University Press, 2010; Security Theology, Surveillance and the Politics of Fear (Cambridge University Press 2015); “Incarcerated Childhood and the Politics of Unchilding” Cambridge University Press 2019); co-edited volumes Engaged Students in Conflict Zones, Community-engaged Courses in Israel as a Vehicle for Change (Palgrave Macmillan Press 2019); When Politics are Sacralized: Comparative Perspectives on Religious Claims and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press 2021); The Cunning of Gender Violence (Duke University Press 2023), and a co-edited volume entitled: Abolitionism, Settler Colonialism and State Crime, 2024.
Stéphanie Wahab PhD. MSW
Professor at Portland State University’s School of Social Work. She teaches courses focused on social justice, philosophies of science, and qualitative inquiry. Her research and scholarship are concerned with the intersections of individual and state sanctioned violence, including but not limited to intimate partner violence, systemic racism, and criminalization. She has been a Motivational Interviewing trainer since 2000, and became a Certified MINT (Motivational Interviewing Network of Trainers) Trainer in 2020. She is a co-editor of Feminisms in Social Work Research: Promise and possibilities for justice based knowledge.
Welcome To Eikra
Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Dr. Samah Saleh
Dr. Abeer Musleh
Dr. Eileen Kuttab
Dr. Eyad Al-Krunz
Dr. Rawan Ibrahim
Dr. Nahida Al-Arja
Mr. Firas Jaber