The Palestine-Israel conflict is one predicated on land: who controls it, what they do with it, if they have a right to it, how credible their claims are to it. The Place that is Ours: Maps of Palestine-Israel is a project that seeks to visualize how the territory has been imagined, mapped and curated since the early twentieth century. The project demonstrates the fractured cartography of the region: from place names to border delineations, through contemporary, historical and GIS maps. While the landscape cannot lie, the process of mapping can and The Place that is Ours demonstrates many of the ways we have imagined and reimagined the land over the past 100 years, culminating (or perhaps beginning) with the partition of Palestine in 1948. The project offers a historical and academic analysis of colonizing spatial practices as well as a personal account of the discovery of and return to a forgotten place, fundamentally examining the messy politics of mapping in the Palestine-Israel conflict. The Place that is Ours is an ongoing project, began during a fellowship at the Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School in the summer of 2017.
Zena Agha is a Palestinian-Iraqi writer, poet, and analyst from London and is currently the US Policy Fellow for Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network. Her writing explores identity, immigration, space, and life in the diaspora. Zena’s poems have been translated and published internationally and she has performed at universities and festivals around the US, UK, and France.
Agha founded Warwick University’s largest poetry collective, Shoot from the Lip, delivered two TED talks both under the banner of identity. Zena’s experiences include the Iraqi Embassy in Paris, the Palestinian delegation at UNESCO, and the Houses of Parliament. Her media credits include the BBC World Service, The Independent, The Nation, and she has freelanced for The Economist.
Agha graduated with a first in history and politics from Warwick University and was awarded the Kennedy Scholarship to study at Harvard University, completing her master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies. In 2017, she was a summer fellow at the Library Innovation Lab at the Harvard Law School.