Nadia Backleh

Nadia Hajal - Backleh: PhD researcher, English and Comparative Literary Studies (2023-)

Academic Qualification:

2nd MA in Critical Theory (Distinction), University of Kent (UK).

MA in Gender, Law and Development (First Class), Birzeit University (Palestine)

Funding: Doctoral College access scholarship - Sanctuary (Warwick)

Email: Nadia.Backleh@warwick.ac.uk

PhD Research: "Migration and World Literature in the age of Global Modernity"

Situated at the nexus of literature, culture and theory, migration and labour studies, colonial/postcolonial studies, and global scholarship of empire, the project examines how world literature since the 1980s has engaged with the archetypal condition of migration in the historical conjuncture of global capitalism and late imperialism. Specifically, how fiction and non-fiction register: (1) cultures of migration, (2) predicaments of global capitalism and empire on migrant masses, and (3) modalities through which migrants seek a way out of their dire conditions. Methodologically, the research employs historical and literary materialist approaches to comprehend/explain the migrants' lived experiences and the social conditions constituting their lives. And it argues for the centrality of capturing the historical particularities of migrants' realities while, simultaneously, situating them in relation to global capitalist modernity and its totalizing/universalizing dynamics. Restoring class and national analysis of peripheral migrations are key to unfold, comprehend and frame the cause properly.

Supervisors: Prof. Paulo de Medeiros, and Prof. Graeme Macdonald

Publications:

(2025). Two book reviews. In Varma, Rashmi, et al. "Palestine Book Forum." Postmodern Culture, vol. 34 no. 2, 2024. Project MUSE. Project MUSE - Palestine Book Forum

(2024). "Towards Rethinking the Politics of Global Cultures of Migration." In Navigating Borders: Perspectives on Migration and identity. London: Interdisciplinary Discourses. pp.46-68. Navigating-Borders.pdf

(2024). "The Question of Freedom, Democracy and Human Dignity at the 'End of History': Lea Ypi’s Free." Extended Review, in Romman Cultural Magazine (Arabic). سؤال الحرية والديمقراطية وكرامة الإنسان ما قبل وبعد "نهاية التاريخ"

Teaching:

University of Warwick: "Epic into Novel" (GTA programme 2024-25)
Birzeit University (2009-2023): "Introduction to Feminist Theories", "Women in Arab Society", "English Academic Writing", "Modern and Contemporary European Civilization", "Modern and Contemporary Arab Thought", "Psychology of Self and Identity", and "English Readings in Social and Human Sciences".

Conferences:

(Oct 2024). "The Socialism of the Anti-Colonial Feminist Narrations of Sahar Khalifeh: The Pre-Oslo Novels." The Warwick HRC conference Radical Traditions. University of Warwick.
(Nov 2023). "Narrating Labour Migration in Global China: Between Neoliberal and Socialist Paradigms." Historical Materialism 20th Conference. SOAS, UK.
(May 2022). "Dispossession and Labor Migration in Hsiao-Hung Pai’s Scattered Sand (2012)." In Dispossession: A symposium on Marxism, Culture, Extraction, and Enclosure. The Warwick Humanities Research Centre, University of Warwick, UK.
(Apr 2022). "Thinking Global Migration, Borders and Politics of Cultural Hybridity." In Somewhere in Between: Borders and Borderlands conference, organized by the London Centre for Interdisciplinary Research, UK.

Convening & Moderating:

The Warwick ECLS Palestinian Literature and Culture Reading Group (PLCRG)-- a promising initiative supported by Warwick English (2024-).

Convenor, PLCRG seminar "The Academy in the Age of Utmost Catastrophes and Conjunctural Crises," with three informative and critically insightful contributions from Palestine (Abdeljawad Omar), Kashmir (Mudasir Amin), and the UK (Louisa Munch). March 2026.
Convenor, PLCRG seminar "A Biography of Palestinian Cinema," featuring Palestinian novelist & film critic Saleem Albeik. Feb 2026.
Convenor, PLCRG seminar "Reading Modernity in Suad Amiry's Mother of Strangers (2022)," featuring the novelist and Lancaster PhD Sam Naseem. Oct 2025.
Convenor, PLCRG seminar "Fragmented Lives, Modernist Narrations: Edward Said's After the Last Sky (1986)." Nov 2025.
PLCRG-STC co-convened seminars "Beyond the Time of Genocide: Social Pain as a Site of Social Action and Hope in the Gaza Strip," and "The Political Captivity of Palestinians During the Genocide," inviting BZU scholars Orouba Othman and Lena Meari, respectively. 2025.
Convenor, PLCRG seminar reading Adania Shibli's Minor Details (2020)," in conversation with the novelist. 2025.
Co-convened with Student Societies, reading Emile Habibi's masterpiece The Pessoptimist (1974). 2025.
Convenor, discussion of Bashir Abu-Manneh's literary critical work The Palestinian Novel: From 1948 to the Present (2016). 2024.
Panel moderator, "Art and Literature as sites of Resistance and Solidarity." In Is a Better World Possible? - Solidarity as a Conversation across Temporalities. Nov 2025. University of Warwick.
Panel moderator, "Reconstructing Identity in Diaspora." Radical Traditions conference. Oct 2024. University of Warwick.
Co-Organiser, the ECLS 20th Annual PG Symposium, a one-day conference showcasing the work of the University of Warwick's postgraduates in English and Comparative Literary Studies and related disciplines, May 2024. University of Warwick.