Dr Sharri Plonski, PhD (SOAS/University of London)

Profile

My work sits at the nexus of critical political geography and international politics. My PhD and teaching experiences to date have been in Middle East politics and development studies, and my current a research agenda explores the physical connective infrastructure of global geo-economic and geo-political relations, through the lens of Palestine/Israel. In both my writing and teaching, I approach international politics through the lens of settler colonial studies, critical border studies, and critical Palestine/Israel studies, and attempt to engage my students through the lenses and voices of those that often sit in the margins, and off the radar of mainstream discourses. My PhD project, which I developed at SOAS/University of London, was recently published under the title of Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space (2018), and explores the ‘ordinary and extraordinary’ resistances of Palestinian citizens of Israel, by tracing the border politics produced through the evolution of three cases/spaces of land struggles in Israel.

Alongside (and long before) my academic career, I worked in a variety of civil society and human rights organisations, centred around the politics of Palestine, and spent 20 years, in a range of formal and non-formal classrooms, around the world. I am a coordinating member of the SOAS ‘borderlab’, and co-coordinate an inter-disciplinary network around the themes of settler colonialism, knowledge production and anticolonial/decolonial praxis.

Undergraduate Teaching

POL109 Global Histories

POL241 War and Security in World Politics

POL244 The International Politics of the Developing World

Research

Research Interests:

Critical Geography and border dynamics; infrastructure, global transport corridors, (im)mobility of people and goods; settler colonial relations and anti-colonial resistance; Middle East politics (especially Palestine/Israel).

Examples of research funding:

2016-2017 Pilot Study Funding Grant: £4070, Council for British Rresearch in the Levant

2014          Wadad Kadi Travel Fellowships: $500, Middle East Studies Association

2011-2012 The Abdullah Al-Mubarak Al-Sabah Foundation Scholarship: £2000, BRISMES

2011-2012 SOAS Additional Grant for Field Research: £724, SOAS, University of London

2011-2012 Field Research Travel Grant: £800, Council for British Rresearch in the Levant

2010-2014 SSHRC Doctoral Award: $80,000; Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Canada

Publications

Monograph

(2018) Palestinian Citizens of Israel: Power, Resistance and the Struggle for Space. London: SOAS Palestine Studies Book Series, I.B. Tauris

Journal articles and working papers

(forthcoming, 2018) (with Hawari, Y. and Weizman, E.) “Knowing Israel through Palestine: Knowledge Production as Anti-Colonial Praxis”.  Settler Colonial Studies (Special issue: “Settlers and Citizens: A Critical View of Israeli Society”), eds Y. Hawari, S. Plonski and E. Weizman

(forthcoming, 2018) “Material Footprints: The Struggle for Borders by Bedouin-Palestinians in Israel”, Antipode

2017 (with Meehan, P.) ‘Brokering the Margins: A Review of Concepts and Methods’, Working Paper for Borderlands, Brokers and Peacebuilding in Nepal and Sri Lanka

(in progress) “Producing and Sustaining ‘Internal Borderlands’ – The Case of Israel’s Palestinian Citizens”, to be submitted to International Political Sociology

(in progress) “Subversive Cartographies: Reclaiming Palestinian Space in Jaffa-Tel Aviv”, to be submitted to Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

(in progress) (with Jonathan Goodhand, Oliver Walton & Patrick Meehan) ‘Towards a Theory of  Borderland Brokerage’, to be submitted to Geoforum or Political Geography.

2007 “Peacebuilding in Israel and Palestine: Applying a Gendered Lens” in Education, Conflict and Reconciliation: International Perspectives, eds. Leach, F. & Dunne, M., P. 65-78. Bern: Peter Lang Publishing.

2005 “Developing Agency Through Peacebuilding in the Midst of Intractable Conflict: The Case of Israel and Palestine”, Compare 35, December: 393-409.

Supervision

I could supervise students working on the politics of infrastructure, geo-economics and critical geography, and/or critical studies of Palestine/Israel

Public Engagement

2017 – present Research Associate, London Middle East Institute, SOAS (University of London).

2016 – present Co-Editor, Accord Insight 4: “Bringing in the Margins: Peacebuilding and Transition in the Borderlands”, Conciliation Resources, London, UK

2017 – present Organising Committee, “The Border Lab”, SOAS, London

2017 – present Co-Chair, ISA Sponsored Working Group: “Unsettling’ International Relations: Knowing and Unknowing the Settler   Colonial Present”, ISA, San Francisco 

2016 – present Co-editor, “Settlers and Citizens: A Critical View of Israeli Society” [Special Issue], Settler Colonial Studies, forthcoming 2018

2016 – present Co-Coordinator, “Decolonising Knowledge Production in Settler Colonial States” Workshop and Research Laboratory, multiple locations, including: Palestine (CBRL, 2017), London (LSE, 2017), Canada (University of Toronto, 2019).

2016 – present Advisory Project Director, All 1 Collective, UK, Multiple Locations