Dr Katie Natanel

I am an educator, researcher, editor and organiser whose work engages with gender, power, violence, decolonisation, creativity and everyday life. My academic interests span three areas: gender and sexuality in Palestine/Israel; decolonial and anticolonial feminist pedagogies; and ecology.

I joined the Institute as a Lecturer in Gender Studies in 2016, focusing on gender in the Middle East. My academic research in this area explores how gender and sexuality shape – and are shaped by – political participation and mobilisation, conflict and political violence, and political emotions, primarily in the context of Palestine/Israel. I am particularly interested in micro-politics, or the politics of everyday life, and psycho-social dynamics. These themes are reflected in my first book project, Sustaining Conflict: Apathy and Domination in Israel-Palestine (2016, University of California Press), which was awarded the 2017 Feminist and Women's Studies Association (UK & Ireland) Book Prize. They also shape the collection of conversations in Palestine in a World on Fire (2024, Haymarket Books), edited with Ilan Pappé.

As an ethnographer I work with feminist research methods, as well as feminist, queer and gender theory more broadly. My research and teaching emphasise creative methods, from visual ethnography and digital storytelling to participatory action research. I continue to develop this approach through collaboration on decolonial and anticolonial feminist pedagogies. Since 2017, I have worked closely with students and comrades to challenge what ‘counts’ as knowledge, insisting on the significance of aesthetic and embodied expression – as ways of knowing that reach and move people. Examples of our praxis can be seen in my most recent publications ‘Toward a Liberation Pedagogy’ (in Kohl: a Journal for Body and Gender Research, special issue on 'Anticolonial Feminist Imaginaries') and ‘Steps toward a decolonial feminist ecology’ (in Creative Ruptions for Emergent Educational Futures, Palgrave Macmillan). 

Over the next five years, my research agenda will focus on ecology – as shaped by my background in gender studies and Middle East studies; my engagement with decolonial politics; and my professional experience in horticulture and restoration ecology. My central interest lies in the relationship between land, water and human inhabitation. Rather than conceiving of ecology as the management of systems—in which humans are embedded—with the aim of creating and sustaining balance, my work focuses on interactions, bonds and flows across time and space. This approach is at the heart of my emerging research project titled "Shorelines: Ecologies of Living."

In addition to research and teaching, I worked with Radical Ecology as the coordinator of the Black Atlantic Innovation Network (BAIN) from 2023-2024. I was the lead author of ‘A Framework for Environmental Justice’ (2024), which Radical Ecology developed with the UCL Sarah Parker Remond Centre and other Network partners. From 2022-2025, I also served as the Executive Editor for Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) – an organisation that publishes critical alternative reporting and analysis of the Middle East and North Africa.

Biography:

I received my PhD in Gender Studies from SOAS, University of London, where I also earned an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. Prior to this, I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) with a BA in Women's Studies, and concentrations in Eastern Religions and African-American History. I joined the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies as a Lecturer in Gender Studies in 2016.

Research supervision:

Please feel free to get in touch about supervison if your work falls within any of my broad research interests:

• decolonial ecology
• land-based decolonial politics & practices
• political participation and mobilisation
• decolonisation and anti-colonial movements
• decolonial and anticolonial pedagogies
• conflict and political violence
• affect and political emotions
• feminist and gender theory
• feminist research methods
• gender and sexuality in the Middle East, North Africa and their diasporas
  
  

I am particularly interested in working with students on projects that engage with decolonial ecologies; feminist decolonial theory and praxis; and transnational or internationliaist solidarity.