14/07/2025
What happens when graduate students researching East Jerusalem — social services, education, public health, architecture and urban planning and more - gather to exchange their research findings?
Graduate students from East Jerusalem at Hebrew University decided to find out, and for the second year they organized the East Jerusalem Annual Research Seminar. Participants included current students and graduates, faculty and professionals, hotly debating the findings. The number of students from East Jerusalem at Hebrew University is increasing each year, and with them the number of research students.
The EJARS is a wonderful opportunity to pull together research across disciplines and departments, and to disseminate the knowledge beyond the walls of the University.
The program, conducted in Arabic with translation through headphones into Hebrew and English, comprised two lecture panels and a poster panel. The first panel asked ‘what’s different about social and medical services for children and youth in East Jerusalem’? Findings emphasized the need for medical and service professionals to deeply understand how parents, as well as children, are affected by check-points and border crossings, lack of medical coverage and challenges in responding to Israeli authorities. The second panel investigated aspects of citizenship. Can East Jerusalem residency be defined as ‘grey citizenship’? How do East Jerusalemite teachers cope with the Israeli curriculum for citizenship, including extreme surveillance and oddly unsuitable textbooks?
The seminar was sponsored by the School of Education, the Diversity Unit and the Urban Clinic, with an extraordinarily talented student leadership team including architects and urban planners Tharaa Kiresh and Maliha Zugayar, and urban planning graduate students Fatina Husseini and Mina Hashimeh.
