This is the blog website for ‘LIFTA x Columbia University Center for Palestine Studies’ present: ‘Palestine, IN-BETWEEN’, a semester-long program that explores contemporary Palestinian cultures and yearnings across generations in Palestine and its diaspora. Through media including live panels, original videos, podcasts, essays, film screenings, and social media campaigns, ‘Palestine, IN-BETWEEN,’ spotlights the untold and unfamiliar. It gives precedent to the under-celebrated; the agents of design who draft and re-draft blueprints for present-day liberation. ‘Palestine, IN-BETWEEN’ is an ode to the powers of self-freedom and agency that breathe life into all beings, unbound from restrictions imposed by states and systems. Its content helps to lay the foundation for desired futures by rejecting the projections of a homogenous Palestinian experience and deconstructing the often flattened Palestinian identity.

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Click below to follow for program announcements:


Center for Palestine Studies ︎︎

Sign up for the CPS mailing list at the bottom of this page

LIFTA Volumes ︎︎

Program Info ︎ 

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This program is presented by CPS + LIFTA + Lena Mansour + Cher Asad:

︎︎︎ Click to learn more about CPS ︎︎︎
︎︎︎ Click to learn more about LIFTA ︎︎︎


☆ LIFTA Volumes ☆

LIFTA includes editor Amira Asad and creative director Leila Peinado. Founded in 2018, LIFTA is a space led by the imagination. Prioritizing collaboration and human-centric processes, LIFTA develops projects across different mediums, including publications, exhibitions, and film. Crafted by people of the region, our inaugural project is a book centered upon the theme of Future Palestine. Volume I features work from award-winning artists, poets, curators, researchers, and writers from Palestine and its diaspora.

☆ Lena Mansour ☆

A writer and co-founder of the Haifa Independent Film Festival. She has a decade of work experience in advocacy and resource development for Palestinian NGOs. She is a graduate of American University, where she studied international relations and communication. Mansour is interested in and works to create autonomous Palestinian projects in historical Palestine. Originally from Tireh, she resides in Haifa.

☆ Cher Asad ☆

A Palestinian-American from Louisville, Kentucky, living in Dubai. She studied psychology and sociology at the University of Louisville. Asad has worked with US-based nonprofits to empower intimate partner and sexual violence survivors, both in shelters and transitional housing programs. Asad is interested in the use of technology to create affordable and borderless access to mental health care within the SWANA region.


Center for Palestine Studies (CPS), Columbia University:


☆ Simone Rutkowitz ☆

The Program Manager at the Center for Palestine Studies. She holds an MA in Near Eastern Studies from the Hagop Kevorkian Center at NYU.

☆ Brian Boyd ☆

Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, and Director of Museum Anthropology at Columbia University, Brian has been carrying out archaeological research in Palestine/Israel for thirty years, and is currently Co-Director (with Dr. Hamed Salem, Birzeit University) of the project Building Community Anthropology Across the Jordan Valley in the West Bank village of Shuqba.

☆ Nasreen Abd Elal ☆

Nasreen Abd Elal is a multidisciplinary researcher, graphic designer, and illustrator based in New York City. She received her BA from Columbia University in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS). She was the recipient of the 2020 alQaws fellowship “Palestine through the Lens of Queer Politics” and is also a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement.