Congratulation, how does it feel to receive this award, and what does it mean to you personally and professionally?
I am incredibly happy and honoured to receive the EISA Best Dissertation Award. Writing a PhD is such a long and sometimes quite solitary process, so having the dissertation recognised in this way feels especially meaningful.
On a personal level, the research grew out of many years of engagement and friendships with Palestinians and Israelis. While I wrote the dissertation, the research would not have been possible without the people who shared their life stories, worries, experiences, and political commitments with me, often very generously. It therefore means a great deal to me that the award might encourage more people to engage with the dissertation and, through it, with the perspectives and experiences of those who are at its heart.
Professionally, the award gives me confidence to continue developing this research and to bring the dissertation into its next stage, particularly as I work towards turning it into a book. It is also meaningful recognition that the questions I engage with around political contestation, power, visibility, and recognition resonate beyond the specific case of Palestine and Israel and can contribute to wider debates in peace and conflict studies.
What is your dissertation about, and what are its main findings or contributions?
My dissertation examines how people challenge dominant political narratives and unequal relations of power through embodied and performative forms of dissent. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Palestine and Israel, I explore commemorative ceremonies, demonstrations, and Palestinian artistic performances as sites where political meanings, identities, and relations are enacted, contested, and reimagined.
A central contribution of the dissertation is to broaden how we understand political contestation. Political disagreement is not expressed only through arguments or formal demands, but also through bodies, performances, emotions, images, and the use of public space. I develop the concept of agonistic epistemic disruptions to describe moments in which established ways of understanding a conflict are unsettled and alternative interpretations become possible. These disruptions can also open space for political identities and forms of belonging that do not fit neatly into dominant categories or prescribed positions within the conflict. The dissertation also shows that these openings remain shaped by the unequal conditions in which they emerge. Performative forms of dissent can challenge dominant orders and create possibilities for different kinds of political engagement, while still being constrained by the broader asymmetries of the conflict.
Why do you think your research is particularly relevant today?
The questions at the heart of the dissertation have become even more urgent since 7 October 2023 and amid the genocide in Gaza. At a moment when the scale of physical violence is so immense that it can be difficult to comprehend, I think it is especially important not to lose sight of the forms of epistemic violence that can accompany, legitimise, and sustain it. Struggles over Palestine and Israel are also struggles over whose suffering is recognised, which histories and experiences are considered legitimate, and who is able to speak, mourn, protest, or make political claims in public.
My research helps to understand these struggles by looking beyond formal political debate to the role of bodies, images, performances, commemoration, and public space. It examines how dominant narratives can be challenged and marginalised perspectives made visible, while also showing how difficult it is to create more open forms of political contestation under conditions of profound inequality and violence.
I think these questions resonate far beyond Palestine and Israel. At a time of growing polarisation, democratic backsliding, and increasingly entrenched political divisions, the ability to live with disagreement without turning political opponents into enemies feels especially important. This requires understanding not only physical forms of violence, but also the ways in which political realities are produced, legitimised, and contested, and how spaces might be created in which conflicting perspectives can coexist without erasing profound differences or inequalities.
The committee comment:
The committee found that the thesis offers an original and significant contribution to peace and conflict studies through its innovative concept of agonistic epistemic disruptions, showing how embodied protest and political performance challenge dominant narratives, forms of epistemic violence, and exclusionary collective identities in Palestine and Israel. Grounded in multi-sited ethnographic research, you provide a compelling account of how contestation over memory, meaning, and recognition can create possibilities for political transformation and coexistence in deeply divided societies. The dissertation is theoretically sophisticated, empirically persuasive, and advances understanding of peacebuilding by moving beyond consensus-oriented approaches to highlight the productive role of conflict and disagreement in fostering more inclusive forms of political engagement.
Read more about the Dissertation at Lund University Research Portal
Read more about the Anne Lene Stein at Lund University Research Portal
Read more about the EISA - The Best Dissertation Award