Contributors

Essam Fawzy graduated in sociology from Zaqaziq University and then com­pleted a Diploma in African Anthropological Studies at Cairo University’s In­stitute of African Studies. He worked as a researcher at the Arab Research Centre and the Cairo Centre for Development Studies before taking up his current research position at the Alternative Development Studies Centre in Cairo.

Lisa Hajjar, a sociologist, teaches in the Law and Society Program at the Uni­versity of California at Santa Barbara. In addition to domestic violence, her work on human rights issues has focused on torture, international criminal pro­secutions and the legal practice of political lawyers. Her book, Courting Conflict, the Israeli Military Court System in the West Bank and Gaza, is forthcoming from University of California Press.

Rema Hammami is an assistant professor at the Women’s Studies Centre at Birzeit University and also lectures in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. She directs the centre’s Gender, Law, and Development master’s programme. She received her PhD from Temple University in Cultural Anthropology with a thesis entitled Between Heaven and Earth: Transflormations in Religiosity and Labour Among Southern Palestinian Peasant and Refugee Women, 1g20- ³äää. For the past several years she has been working on gender issues in Palestinian political and economic life and has served as the centre’s consultant to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics and the Ministry of Labour. She was director of the Women’s Affairs Centre in Gaza from ιggι to 1gg5 and currently serves on the board of the Jerusalem Centre for Human Rights.

Penny Johnson is an associate researcher at the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University and chaired the university’s Human Rights Committee (ιg83- 2000). Her current research interests include gender, war and citizenship, social policy, particularly social support and poverty eradication, and gender, family relations and public discourse. In a 2001 publication with Eileen Kuttab, she examined ‘Where Have All the Women (and Men) Gone?: Reflections on Gender and the Second Palestinian Intifada’. She has served as member of the National Poverty Commission, contributing to the writing of the first National Poverty Report, and was a staff writer for the Palestinian delegation to the Madrid Conference and the Bilateral Negotiations and a member of the delegation’s Human Rights Committee.

Fadwa al-Labadi is Assistant Professor in Gender and Social Development at Al- Quds (Jerusalem) University and formerly lecturer in Women’s Studies and activities coordinator in the Institute of Women’s Studies at Birzeit University. She was one of the founders of the Women’s Studies Centre in EastJerusalem and former editor of its magazines, Al-Mara (Woman) and Kul al-.Ni.saa (Every Woman). She received her PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of Kent at Canterbury, writing her thesis on Women and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Palestine. She has recently completed an MA in International and Comparative Legal Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University. Prior to her postgraduate education, she served as a teacher of Arabic in the public school system in the years of Israeli military occupation and was harassed by the Israeli military authorities for her labour and women’s movement activities.

Asifa Quraishi is a doctoral student at Harvard Law School, writing her SJD thesis in comparative Islamic and American legal theory. She holds an LLM from Columbia Law School (focusing on federal habeas corpus law), a JD from UC Davis and a BA from UC Berkeley.

Najeeba Syeed-Miller is a professional mediator in the Los Angeles County area. She has attended over four hundred hours of conflict resolution training. Her trainers include H. Jamal Muhammad of Pensylvania State University. Most recently, she returned from a one-month training course held in The Hague by the International Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution and the Uni­versity of Erasmus. In addition, she recently ñî-trained United Nations relief workers who will serve in the rehabilitation efforts in Afghanistan. In 2003-04 she will be implementing a fellowship focused on alternative dispute resolution and diversity, with a special emphasis on family development and international conflicts.

Ms Syeed-Miller has mediated a large number of cases, including youth- oriented disputes, inter-racial disputes and community-based conflicts. She has trained hundreds of people in mediation skills and conflict resolution issues. Her trainees range from prosecutors to community leaders. While at law school she was the coordinator of Student Mediation Services and was awarded the Oexmann Fellowship for her work in community conflict resolution. During college, she served as the coordinator for the Peace and Conflict Studies Department and was awarded the Hazel Steinfeldt Scholarship for excellence in community conflict resolution work. Ms Syeed-Miller is dedicated to the use of mediation as a grass­roots tool.

Lynn Welchman is director of the Centre of Islamic and Middle Eastern Law (CIMEL) at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a senior lecturer in the SOAS Law Department. Prior to taking up the post at SOAS, she worked with the Palestinian non-governmental human rights movement for many years, and has also undertaken human rights work with international NGOs. Her PhD thesis was on the implementation of Muslim family law in the Palestinian West Bank, where she has also worked with the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling and served as a visiting lecturer at the Institute of Women’s Studies, Birzeit University.