Dr Manal Massalha
- Associate Lecturer
Manal is an urban ethnographer, sociologist, community organiser/activist and multimedia artist.
Manal uses social documentary photography, participatory filmmaking, digital storytelling, sound recording, text, discourse analysis and archival excavation in her work. Her practice bridges theory, research and art.
Manal worked in research, writing, reporting and advocacy capacities for numerous UN agencies in the occupied Palestinian territory and Nigeria. She is expert in the Palestinian-Israeli context and humanitarianism.
Key details
School, Centre or Area
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Practice
Manal’s practice is anchored in people and is about storytelling. It’s immersive and engaging. Critical and reflexive. Collaborative and accountable. Caring and ethical. Intersectional and interdisciplinary. Generative and decolonising. Disruptive and empowering. Healing and restorative.
It interrogates and problematises. Theorises and advocates. Questions politics of representation and othering. Refuses dehumanisation and challenges the dominant binary, divisive discourse of us vs. them.
Manal celebrates conviviality, that is our ability to live together not despite but because of difference. She centres hope and building communities of love, care and solidarity as our response to rising fascism, genocide, and divisive politics.
Manal holds a PhD in urban sociology from the London School of Economics, under the supervision of Prof Paul Gilroy.
Research interests
Urban ethnography, conviviality, hope as a political project, communities of love, care and solidarity, inclusive cities, public space, housing inequalities, urban health, forcible displacement, and their intersectionality with class, gender, race and coloniality.
External collaborations and activities
Manal is a research-informed artist in Walking, Power and Inclusion, a University of London, UKRI-funded, pilot project.
Publications, exhibitions and other outcomes
Selected publications
Co-edited book
Lewis, M. and Massalha. M. (eds), (Summer 2026) Sonic Justice, Routledge Focal Press (forthcoming).
Book chapter
Massalha, M. (Summer 2026), Ethnographies of Listening: settler-colonial violence, erasure and convivial possibilities, Sonic Justice, Routledge Focal Press (Forthcoming publication).
Peer-reviewed articles
Bauman, H. and Massalha, M., July 2021,‘Your daily reality is rubbish’: Waste as a means of urban exclusion in the suspended spaces of East Jerusalem , Special Issue: Infrastructural stigma and Urban Vulnerability, Journal of Urban Studies, July 2021/
Bouquet, B., Massalha, M. et al, (Autumn/Winter 2022), Housing Precariousness and Health: A Mixed Methods Study into Households Affected by Displacement and Demolitions in East Jerusalem, Lancet Online. Abstract and paper presented at the 11th Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance Conference, 12 July 2021.