Imad Sayrafi spoke together with Helmut Krieger and Klaudia Rottenschlager about “Rooting Development in the Palestinian Context: Research in War and Conflict Zones”. How can the meaning of development be articulated when Palestinians in the Palestinian Territories have no control over borders, movement within their own communities, natural resources, land zoning, or economic policy tools due to decades of Israeli rule? How can the Palestinian Diaspora in Jordan and Lebanon be included in a project? Towards what does development in a regional context of conflict and war strive? These are some of the main questions on which the researchers work in the APPEAR project “Rooting Development in the Palestinian Context” in which were discussed in this lecture.
Imad Sayrafi is a researcher at the Center for Development Studies at Birzeit University in the Westbank. He is currently a PhD candidate at the Department of Development Studies at the University of Vienna focusing on resistance strategies and economic transformation in rural Palestine. He is an APPEAR scholarship holder within the project “Rooting Development within the Palestinian Context”. He also holds a master’s degree in Gender and Development Studies from Birzeit University.