About Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies

The Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Institute of International Studies (IALIIS) was established at Birzeit University in 1998 as a pioneering academic and research institution named after the Palestinian Academic Dr. Ibrahim Abu-Lughod. Since its inception, the Institute has played a pivotal role in developing the Masters Program in International Studies, characterized by its interdisciplinary nature, and the critical intellectual environment it fosters, enabling students to develop a deep understanding of international and regional contexts from a Palestinian liberation perspective.

The Institute aims to produce knowledge relevant to the Palestinian context, and to equip students with the tools needed to analyze the global political, legal, and economic reality, and enhance their critical thinking and ability to deconstruct systems of colonialism and oppression. The Institute places great emphasis on building a generation of researchers capable of influencing local and global geographies.

The Institute provides an open space for societal and political debates through a series of public activities and seminars that address the most prominent global challenges, and through its engagement with local, regional, and international academic networks. The Institute aspires to be a strategic think tank in Palestine, committed to freedom, justice, and knowledge production.

About the Conference

The "Engineering Destruction: Militarization and the War Economy" conference is held amidst a brutal war of extermination waged by the Zionist regime against the Palestinian people and those in solidarity with them. This moment lays bare, with unprecedented ferocity, the deep structures of militarization and machinery of death, revealing how massacres are managed as part of an interconnected economic and security system that regards human beings not as lives of value, but as testing grounds for instruments of violence and repression or as resources to be exploited. Within this violent context in Palestine and beyond, the conference seeks to critically examine the structural relationship between militarization and the war economy. It rejects the narratives of dominant states and actors, and instead re-centers dispossessed, oppressed, and resisting communities as essential to understanding our world today.

Wars are not accidental or exceptional events; they are instruments used to reshape political geographies, entrench economic domination, and expand surveillance and repression. From the occupation of land to the militarization of the skies, from precision killing technologies to policies of siege and isolation, the conference interrogates how societies are transformed into laboratories for the development of weapons and tools of control, particularly in the era of neoliberalism and the alliance between capital and security corporations.

The conference traces the silent spread of militarization into all aspects of life: in universities, on streets, through separation walls, and on the bodies of refugees and detainees. It also sheds light on the systematic repression targeting student movements and activists resisting authoritarian regimes, and those in solidarity with Palestine across the globe.

This conference, however, does not stop at diagnosing the engineering of destruction. It also listens to the voices of resistance: from the boycott of complicit corporations, to the building of transnational solidarity networks, to the reclamation of public spaces as sites of struggle. Militarization is not only confronted through arms, but through collective awareness, refusal, and the reconstruction of alternative and more just realities.

This conference constitutes a collective space for critical thought and political action, reinforcing our commitment to dismantling systems of oppression and confronting their material and symbolic structures in a historical moment that demands moral clarity and intellectual courage. Even within this militarized world, there have always been energies and tools striving to create a future grounded in justice and freedom.

Conference Organizing Committee

Mai Al-Battatt

Basil Farraj

Salma Hamza

Anees Safouri

Danya Zorba

Program

CONFERENCE – ENGINEERING DESTRUCTION: MILITARIZATION AND THE WAR ECONOMY, BIRZEIT, JUNE 16-17

Listed Time Zone is that of Palestine (Listed time zone is that of Palestine, GMT +3)

Live Streaming of all Panels Will Be Available Online, with Simultaneous Translation Available in Arabic, English, and Spanish

Opening Remarks & Keynotes

Exhibition