Academic scoops academic award for Palestine research book

A University of Wolverhampton academic has scooped an award for her academic research in the 2022 Palestine Book Awards. 

Ashjan Ajour is a lecturer in Sociology in the University’s Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences in Wolverhampton and was offered a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in the Centre for Middle East at Brown University, USA. Her research focuses on gender, feminist theories and movements, decolonization, political subjectivity, and incarceration. 

The book, Reclaiming Humanity in Palestinian Hunger Strikes: Revolutionary Subjectivity and Decolonizing the Body, is rooted in feminist ethnography and decolonial feminist theory and explores the subjectivity of Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons, as shaped by resistance. Ashjan examines how these prisoners use their bodies in anti-colonial resistance; what determines this mode of radical struggle; the meanings they ascribe to their actions; and how they constitute their subjectivity while undergoing extreme bodily pain and starvation. 

The Middle East Monitor (MEMO) announced the books shortlisted for its 2022 Palestine Book Awards earlier this year. The awards event, now in its eleventh year, honours and celebrates books in English about Palestine. It encourages authors and publishers to produce more books on Palestine. 

Over 50 books were submitted for consideration which is the highest record of books put forward for the Awards. The shortlisted winners selected by the judges have added to the diversity of submissions and genres featuring the Palestinian narrative.