About

The practice-led research is a participatory, audio-visual exploration of haunting in Palestine. Working closely with those who have experienced haunting, supernatural sightings and/or spirit possession, I will be using film, sound, photography and other mixed mixed media to explore how jinn (ghosts, spirits, witches, demons and other forces of the al-ghaib or ‘unseen’ world) are experienced, embodied and described by different Palestinian communities. It draws on my background as a visual anthropologist and artist-curator and offers a radically new way of representing and conceptualising the relationship between violence, trauma, memory and the metaphysical in Palestine.

This PhD looks at how concepts of haunting relate to both historical and contemporary violence in Palestine from the British Mandate period (1918-1948) to Israeli occupation (1948-present). It examines what form hauntings take in Palestine and how these apparitions are linked to political volatility, violence, (post)colonialism and intergenerational trauma. Yet it treats ghosts as more than just symbolic, considering how experiences, memories and tales of hauntings may be explored through participatory artistic practice.

Inspired by Tina Campt’s (2017) theory that identity photographs of black communities can be “heard”, this research seeks new ways of working together with Palestinian communities to think about how silent, often invisible forces are experienced and can be audio-visually represented. This will be rooted in an exploration of ethnographies and participatory art work related to themes of trauma, memory and violent aftermaths.