Yafa El Masri

I define myself as both a refugee and a researcher, as this dual identity shapes how I approach both the theory and lived experiences of displacement.

Born and raised in a small Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, I am committed to producing research that advances justice and enhances the well-being of Palestinian refugees and other migrant communities across the Middle East.

I was awarded the European Union Scholarship for Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon, which enabled me to complete my undergraduate degree in Business Management at Beirut Arab University (2013). After several years working in the corporate and then the humanitarian sector, I was granted the Galilean Higher School of Education Scholarship to pursue an MSc in Local Development (2019), followed by a Galilean Diploma in Social Sciences (2020), and ultimately a PhD in Geographic Studies (2023)—all from the University of Padova in Italy.

I am a human geograper who is interested in looking at refugee spaces and the decolonial potential that arise within them. I have extensive experience in community-based, participatory, ethnographic, and autoethnographic research on forced displacement. My earlier work looks at livelihoods in Palestinian refugee camps and explores alternative humanitarianisms emerging in response to shrinking humanitarian aid, highlighting grassroots forms of cooperation such as food sharing, decolonial education and community healthcare in refugee camps.

My more recent research focuses on refugee agency in knowledge production spaces, examining how displaced communities assert intellectual and political autonomy within academic and policy frameworks.