Session Day: 
Second Day
The Politics of Autonomy Schemes
Session Date: 
Tuesday, November 1, 2022 - 15:30 - 17:30
Session Language: 
Session Moderator: 
Session's Program: 

Colonial Autonomy: Local Authority

Leena Dallasheh

Colonial Contingencies: The Demunicipalization of Urban Governance in Jerusalem

Falestin Naili

The Palestinian Struggle for a Parliament, 1920-1935

Laila Parsons

The Unbuilt Parliament: British Colonial Plans for a Legislative Assembly Hall in Jerusalem

Julio Moreno Cirujano

About the session: 

This panel examines four cases of local governance—the nature of local authority proposed by the British for local councils; the undermining of municipal authority in Jerusalem; the struggle for the establishment of a Palestinian parliament in the 1920s and 1930s; and the British unrealized plans for a parliament/legislative assembly in Palestine.

About the speakers: 

Lana Judeh: is an architect, researcher, and faculty member in the Department of Architectural Engineering at Birzeit University. She is currently a member of the editorial team of Arab Urbanism; a platform for critical ideas on the past, present, and future of cities and urbanism in the Arab region.

Leena Dallasheh: is an associate professor of history at Humboldt State University. Her research focuses on the history of Palestine/Israel, with a particular interest on Palestinians who became citizens of Israel in 1948.

Falestin Naili: is a historian associated with the Institut français du Proche-Orient in Amman and the Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes in Lyon. She specializes in the social history of the late Ottoman and Mandate Palestine and Jordan and has focused much of her recent research on local governance and politics, particularly in Jerusalem.

Laila Parsons: is professor of modern Middle East history at McGill University. Her research has focused on the 1948 war, rebel soldiers in the interwar period, and the place of narrative and biography in the historiography of the modern Middle East. She is currently writing a book on the British occupation of Palestine.

Julio Moreno Cirujano: is a PhD student at SOAS writing a dissertation on colonial material culture during the British Mandate in Palestine. He is interested in the role of symbolic artifacts in articulating nation-state aesthetics and legitimizing processes of state building.