Birzeit: In the first initiative of its kind, the Palestinian Museum has announced 17 grants for research on Palestinian culture. The initiative comes in fulfilment of one of the key components of the Museum’s 2019–2023 strategic plan and is run by its newly-established research and knowledge department. The department’s programme is aimed at fostering civic engagement and reflexion, producing and disseminating knowledge about Palestine, and addressing knowledge gaps about Palestinian history and culture. The department’s first annual programme is made possible by the generous support of Ghalia and Omar al-Qattan.
Accordingly, the Museum has issued an open call to academic and field researchers to submit papers on four main topics: ‘Art History in Palestine and its Discourses from the 19th Century until the Late-20th Century’; ‘The Palestinian Coast: from the Late Ottoman Period until the Present’; ‘History of Printing in Jerusalem’; and ‘New Perspectives on Contemporary Palestinian Culture’. The deadline for submission of abstracts and research outlines is set for 1 April 2020.
The proposed research project, ‘Art History in Palestine’, is part of the Museum’s new Knowledge Gap Research programme, whose first phase will continue for two years, and which aims to fill knowledge gaps in Palestinian history and culture. It will be followed by a second phase of two years, covering a different topic. Art history was chosen as the first topic in order to shed light on an important cultural practice that has been relatively neglected by canonical Palestinian historiographies.
Complementing the Palestinian Museum’s forthcoming exhibition, Printed in Jerusalem, is the research project titled, ‘History of Printing in Jerusalem’. The project aims to deepen and bolster qualitative research on the history of printing and publishing in Jerusalem, with insight into its material, socio-economic and political contexts, yielding two research papers.
The Museum’s upcoming 2020–2021 exhibition centred on the Palestinian coast is also complemented by a research project on the same topic. The project aims to produce five research papers that expand and strengthen qualitative research on the history of the Palestinian coast, shedding light on its socio-economic, political, and settler-colonial contexts, and on futurism in the Palestinian context.
The research project titled ‘New Perspectives on Contemporary Palestinian Culture’ will yield an edited publication documenting submitted research papers on issues of relevance to contemporary Palestinian culture, and on the Museum’s two current digital projects: Palestinian Journeys and the Digital Archive.
Director General of the Palestinian Museum, Adila Laïdi-Hanieh, PhD, expressed pride in this latest advancement in the Palestinian Museum’s programmes, which sets a precedent in the development of research and knowledge production on Palestinian history and culture. Laïdi-Hanieh also affirmed her appreciation for the generous support lent by Ghalia and Omar al-Qattan, describing the launch of this programme as an embodiment of the Museum’s vision and mission of producing and disseminating knowledge about Palestine.
These projects are part of the Museum’s launch of its new research and civil engagement programme. It includes the development and organisation of local and international events, including exhibition-related conferences, symposia, panel discussions, literary events, workshops, tours, film screenings, and two original publications to document discursive and scholarly interventions and outputs, as well as conference proceedings and papers.
For more details on the research grants and topics, including terms and application guidelines, please visit the Palestinian Museum website: www.palmuseum.org