Discussing Decolonisation: Cultural and Environmental Activism in Palestine

The second event in York St John's Discussing Decolonisation series for 2025/26 will be an in-person discussion with Dr Silvia Hassouna (Durham) and Dr Hannah Boast (Edinburgh) on cultural and environmental activism in occupied Palestine.

We will explore the ways in which Palestinian artists and activists navigate the socio-ecological violence underpinning Israeli settler-colonialism, and consider how the politics and practices of environmentalism might be mobilised to help build international solidarity and support for Palestine's ongoing struggle for self-determination.

The event will begin with presentations from and Q&A with our guest speakers, before opening out to wider group discussion. Time and space will also be preserved at the end to share reflections, strategies and commitments regarding the broader Palestinian liberation movement.

Speaker bios and abstracts:
‘W**d Troubles’ in Palestine: Environmental Imaginaries of the Harmful W**d
This presentation examines the politics of Israeli herbicidal warfare, soil toxicity and contamination through the critical work of Palestinian artists. The talk will explore creative interventions that challenge colonial environmental imaginaries of Palestine through a discussion of the 2020 Ramallah-based W**d Control exhibition. The discussion situates environmental imaginaries of the 'harmful W**d' at the intersection of settler colonialism, visual arts and the environmental humanities, showing how ‘weedy’ metaphors sustain practices of settler colonial expansion and elimination.
is a Fellow in Human Geography and convenor of the Anticolonial/Decolonial Thematic Group at Durham University. Her research lies at the intersection of political ecology, settler colonialism, cultural and environmental activism, with a specific focus on Palestinian creative practices and prefigurative politics.
Environmentalism and the Culture of Palestine Solidarity
This talk outlines an ongoing ‘environmental turn’ in contemporary Palestinian arts and activism. I argue that environmentalism, mediated especially through food, is an increasingly important frame through which Palestinians and their supporters narrate the idea of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle to metropolitan audiences, and through which identification and solidarity are solicited and received. Examples discussed include cookbooks, cooking demonstrations, communal meals, and film screenings. This framing activates and mobilises new constituencies of support, while also promising to reshape the broader environmental movement.
is Chancellor’s Fellow at University of Edinburgh, co-convenor of Edinburgh Environmental Humanities Network, and Lead Judge of the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. She has a background in English and Geography, and is the author of Hydrofictions: Water Power and Politics in Israeli and Palestinian Literature, published in 2020 and shortlisted for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment UK and Ireland Book Prize 2021.

If you would like to receive updates about forthcoming events in the series, along with recordings and materials from past events, please sign up to our Discussing Decolonisation mailing list.

If you have any questions about the event itself, please email series co-conveners Lucy Potter and/or Laura Key.

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