Multilingual Online Academic Collaborations As Resistance: Crossing Impassable Borders

This book details online academic collaborations between universities in Europe, the USA and Palestine. The chapters recount the challenges and successes of online collaborations which promote academic connections and conversations with the Gaza Strip, despite a continuing blockade imposed on Gaza since 2007, and forge relationships between individuals, institutions and cultures. The chapters examine, from different perspectives, what happens when languages and the internet facilitate encounters, and the fundamental importance this has as a form of defiance and of resistance to the physical confinement experienced by Palestinian academics, students and the general population of Gaza. They highlight the limitations of multilingual and intercultural encounters when they are deprived of the sensory proximity of face-to-face situations and what is lost in the translation of languages, practices and experiences from the ‘real’ to the ‘virtual’ world.

This book is open access under a CC BY NC ND licence.

Giovanna Fassetta is a Senior Lecturer in Social Inclusion in the School of Education, University of Glasgow. Giovanna’s research focuses on inclusion in education of children and young people from refugee backgrounds and on refugee education more in general, with a focus on the role of languages and cultures in the process of integration. She has led several projects working with partners in the Gaza Strip and other Low and Middle Income countries, including the Welcoming Languages projects. Giovanna teaches on several Master’s degree programmes with a focus on inclusion in relation to cultural and linguistic diversity, gender identity and sexuality, socioeconomic backgrounds. She currently co-convenes the Glasgow Refugee Asylum and Migration Network (GRAMNet).

Nazmi Al-Masri is an Associate Professor of English Language Teaching at the Islamic University of Gaza. He is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow, UK until 2029. He has served as a Principal Investigator and Co-Investigator for various international research projects, including Disabled Voices from Gaza, Disability under Siege, Culture for Sustainable & Inclusive Peace (CUSP), Researching Multilingually at the Borders of Language: The Body, Law & the State, Welcoming Languages, and eTraining FinPal.

Alison Phipps is a poet and holds the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Education, Languages and Arts at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.