The Mariam Abu Daqqa Fellowship - Announcing the Fellows

In memory of Mariam Abu Daqqa, the courageous Palestinian journalist and visual storyteller killed by Israel during the genocide in Gaza.

7amleh - The Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, is proud to launch the Mariam Abu Daqqa Fellowship. Named in her honor, the fellowship is dedicated to advancing critical research on digital rights, technology, and justice in Palestine and across the region. Mariam embodied fearless truth-telling. Her commitment to documenting the lives and resilience of Palestinians, even amid immense danger, continues to inspire those who strive to defend freedom of expression and access to information.

The Mariam Abu Daqqa Fellowship supports researchers, scholars, and practitioners producing original research that addresses digital rights violations, surveillance, and the political economy of technology in the Palestinian context and beyond. The 2025 cohort brings together five exceptional fellows whose work explores the intersections of technology, human rights, and colonial power.

Meet the 2025 Mariam Abu Daqqa Academic Mentor

We are honored to announce that Dr. Mtanes Shehade will serve as the Academic Mentor for this fellowship cohort. Dr. Mtanes Shehade is a Palestinian scholar specializing in political economy, political behavior, and the relationship between economy and society in Israel/Palestine. He holds a PhD in Political Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and an MA from the University of Haifa. His research focuses on Israeli economic and social policies, the political economy affecting the Palestinian community, and the impact of globalization on political and party structures. Dr. Shehade serves as Director of the Israel Studies Program at Mada al-Carmel - The Arab Center for Applied Social Research in Haifa, and teaches in the MA Program in Israel Studies at Birzeit University.

Meet the 2025 Mariam Abu Daqqa Fellows

Sarah is a community organiser, critical AI researcher, and MSt candidate in AI Ethics and Society at the University of Cambridge. Sarah’s scholarship explores the carceral impacts of technology and how artificial intelligence supports the surveillant, experimental, and necropolitical logics of carceral geographies, especially along racialised lines. Her work spans reproductive justice, labor rights, and refugee displacement.

Sarah’s fellowship research examines the weaponisation of AI in Israel’s surveillance and digital domination of Palestinians, particularly through voice surveillance, capture, and biometric voiceprinting. She investigates whether Israel is building a searchable voice database of Palestinians and identifies the systems and infrastructures enabling this apparatus.

Rawan is a political scientist and researcher in feminist and decolonial frameworks. She holds an MA in Development Studies from Erasmus University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Her work bridges feminist theory, humanitarianism, and decolonial critique, with a strong record of field-based research and mentoring. 

Her research examines how AI-driven humanitarian systems shape aid delivery in Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Through a feminist and decolonial lens, she analyzes how digital tools like biometric registration and predictive algorithms embed surveillance and reinforce structural inequalities.

Arees is a research fellow at the Department of Political Science and Sociology, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. She is a scholar of political and organizational sociology whose work bridges Israel/Palestine studies, technology, gender, and settler colonialism. She has held research positions at Tel Aviv University, Michigan State University, and the European University Institute, among others.

Arees’ research project, Censuring Palestine: Unveiling the Hypocrisy and Dehumanization across Power Structures in Times of Genocide, investigates how governments, corporations, and academia perpetuate censorship and dehumanization of Palestine, particularly through technological and institutional power.

Melody is a PhD candidate in Data Science at the University of Limerick. With a background in psychology and computational social science, Melody’s research examines online identity, discourse, and disinformation. She has explored topics ranging from vaccine misinformation to networked activism across languages.

Melody’s research project analyzes online ads targeting European audiences, particularly campaigns by the Israeli Government Advertising Agency. She studies how these ads evolve, spread misinformation, and shape public opinion, assessing compliance with corporate and EU policies and their real-world consequences.

Islam is a PhD candidate in Social Research Methods at the London School of Economics and Political Science. Born and raised in Lebanon, Islam is a Palestinian refugee researcher whose work centers on anti-colonial knowledge production. Her research connects surveillance, global technology infrastructures, and systems of domination.

Islam’s research examines how Israeli surveillance technologies are integrated into global tech supply chains. Using investigative mapping, she traces how tools developed for occupation are rebranded and embedded in global governance systems as “public safety” or “cybersecurity” infrastructures.

Through the Mariam Abu Daqqa Fellowship, 7amleh reaffirms its commitment to fostering Palestinian and international scholarship that challenges structures of oppression, advances digital rights, and defends freedom of expression in the digital age. We congratulate our fellows and look forward to supporting their vital contributions over the coming months.