Dr Farah Aboubakr
Nominated Fellow, July - August 2025
Home institution: University of Edinburgh
Dr Farah Aboubakr currently holds the post of Lecturer in Arabic at the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh, and has been an IASH Affiliate (2023-2025). She joined the University of Edinburgh in 2013 as a Teaching Fellow in Arabic; a year later attained her PhD degree in Translation and Intercultural Studies from the University of Manchester (December 2014). Since then, her teaching and research portfolios have expanded in interdisciplinary subject areas combining theoretical frameworks from Arabic language and literature, memory studies, translation studies, postcolonial studies, and popular culture. Her journal article, “Peasantry in Palestinian Folktales: Sites of Memory, Homeland and Collectivity” (2017) and monograph The Folktales of Palestine: Cultural Identity, Memory and the Politics of Storytelling (2019) have contributed to the field of cultural studies in conflict zones at a time when there is less scholarship engaging with both memory studies and artistic oral Palestinian productions. Her monograph is the first scholarly work to consider the value of Palestinian folktales (both Arabic and their translations) in reframing the development of cultural identity and post-memory. The study presents new insights into the transcultural shifting position of folktales while also analysing the agency of women storytellers within cultural and social movement studies.
Most recently, she has published/in the process of publishing:
(2025) “Archivalism and Memory Activism: The Nakba (1948) and the Gaza War (2023)”. Memory Studies, 18(2), 439-455;
Resilience, Sumud (transl. steadfast) in Yen Le Espiritu's The SAGE Encyclopaedia of Refugee Studies (due to appear September 2025);
“Entangled Palestinian Memories Activated through Music: Sabreen and 47Soul” in Mobile Histories, Activated Memories: Ruins, Mediums, Artefacts, and Archival Repositories, edited by Norman Saadi Nikro and David Leuopold in Routledge Transdisciplinary Souths Series (due to appear in 2026)
Project title: Palestinian Transgressive Voices: Cultural Memory and Performative Arts in the Diaspora and Palestine (2023-25)
Dr Aboubakr is currently completing her project, Palestinian Transgressive Voices: Cultural Memory and Performative Arts in the Diaspora and Palestine (2023-25). Funded by CBRL, the project’s key objective is to bring together intersecting voices of performers in Palestine and the diaspora around the themes of exile, nationhood, post-memory and notions of identity and the homeland. The research presents an in-depth understanding of the Palestinian performative art scene by unfolding the mechanisms of memory work, production and reception of Palestinian oral and musical performances. An area of research seldom analysed from multi-faceted and interdisciplinary models, this book offers a novel and needed approach in the advancement of performative arts in conflict zones.