Interview with Dr Mona Jebril, Queens' PDRA

Dr Mona Jebril (Q-PDRA, PhD 2012) is a Queens’ Postdoctoral Research Associate, working at the Centre for Business Research, having taken a PhD at Queens’ from 2012 to 2017. She was born in Kuwait but her family relocated to Palestine in 1990, following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Mona finished her school career, attended university and became a school teacher in Gaza, leaving the country for the first time in 2005, to pursue a Master’s degree at the University of Oxford.

Dr Mona JebrilCould you outline your research at the Centre for Business Research?

I am currently working as part of the Research for Health in Conflict, MENA [Middle East and North Africa] Project. The project aims to develop capability for research and training in relation to health in conflict-afflicted areas, especially Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Palestine. Specifically, I am working on the political economy of health in the Gaza Strip, analysing the health system within its macro-economic and political context.

I am working as part of a large team including colleagues at the University of Cambridge, King’s College London, the University of Columbia, the American University of Beirut in Lebanon, Birzeit University in the West Bank (in Palestine) and also from Turkey and Jordan. It is great to be part of a Global Challenge Fund Project: I feel that all these lines are coming together, trying to find solutions for health policy problems in the region. I hope our project will be very useful to the affected areas as they are in desperate need of this kind of collaborative mind-power.

The project aims to build capacity in the MENA region: identifying gaps and providing training courses, both online and in-person. We aim to understand policy-making from the political economy angle, but also develop research capacity for health. This area has not received enough attention and it is important to develop this capacity to contribute towards solving these problems.

What are the main challenges you and your team are facing?

In Gaza, there is very little research done by the local community. Statistics coming from the region can be unreliable, so we find ourselves working in a fragmented context. For instance, there isn’t much literature on the political economy mental health and non-communicable diseases, which are one focus of our study, because these are under-researched in context. So I have to read about everything from health to politics and synthesise information from a variety of sources, which I have found challenging.

What motivated to you leave home in Gaza to pursue your education in the UK?

I was raised to believe that education is power. My parents really believed that, and Palestinians consider education to be their main resource. The experience of being a refugee, losing your land and leaving your home, makes you realise that education is the only resource that you can always take with you.

What inspired your PhD at Queens’?

After I finished my BA in Gaza, in English Language and Literature, I didn’t want to study education. But I became a teacher anyway, because my parents were educators and there was little in the way of other opportunity. After my Masters at the University of Oxford, I returned to teach at two universities in Gaza. During that time, I began to think about the topic that would become my PhD thesis: there was lots of conflict going on – bombardment, siege and restrictions being some of the tangible effects – but sometimes, the conflict was muted for a few calm months, the resources were available, but still, students and academics struggled because of something internal. I didn’t know what this was, so I called it the invisible. But I could tell that it was undermining academic activities. At some points, I felt that I myself was oppressed by it, and still I found it difficult to identify what was undermining my work, other than simply the background of conflict, all too familiar in Gaza. So I applied for PhDs and was offered four scholarships, and decided to become a Gates Scholar at Queens’.

In my research, I took this invisible from contemplation and reflection to research: what is it? I did that through exploring the past, present and future higher education experience for educationalists at Gaza’s universities. I interviewed lecturers about their experience when they were students and I interviewed students and their lecturers about the present situation and how they think the Arab Spring revolutions might affect higher education in the future. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first instance of research exploring the impact of the Arab Spring on the higher education experience in the Gaza Strip, if not more generally. Hence, the study contributes to the dialogue on the Arab Spring from the Palestinian perspective. Conversation from the Palestinian perspective on the Arab Spring has been almost absent. In these respects, it was a unique and pioneering project.

How did you find moving to the UK?

I thought returning to the UK would be easier than my first trip to Oxford for my Masters. But I wasn’t the same person as I was when I left Oxford; the five years in Gaza – the 2008 war, the poor conditions, the changing political situation, the siege imposed a couple of years into my return – had changed me, and I hadn’t realised how deeply I had been affected by this until I left. So when I arrived to the beauty of Cambridge and the happiness and excitement of my fellow students, it was something of a shock. It wasn’t that I wasn’t happy or valuing the opportunity I had been given, but it was that from the inside I felt somehow different. I felt closed. It took me months, perhaps even years, to recover. I was in the context of Cambridge, but somehow also not in Cambridge, because my memories of home and the feelings from Gaza were still with me. When I heard fireworks, they weren’t associated with May Balls but with the bombardment. And this was something invisible and inside me.

How did you find life at Queens’?

I enjoyed meeting friends in the Buttery! The atmosphere was great and I ended up seeing my friends from College more than friends from the faculty, because I saw them every day. I especially enjoyed conversations with colleagues from different departments – I learned a lot from engaging with them. They also learned a lot about Gaza!

I received support whenever I needed it, especially from James Kelly. Overall, though, I think the University should have a leading role in researching students coming from conflict-afflicted areas and in redefining diversity and inclusion in this regard, especially now there is so much conflict happening in the world.

My role has just been to share my experience. When you share your experience, it can improve the experience for others. At Queens’, whenever I needed support I would find it, but sometimes I didn’t ask for it, because I didn’t know it was there, or I couldn’t ask for it or I wasn’t sure this would be accepted or didn’t want to look weird!

But now, when more students come from conflict-afflicted areas, the College have some experience dealing with this and they know about the issues: they know about the borders and the situation in Gaza. The University needs to take into consideration the difficulties that students face when they come from conflict-afflicted areas. Maybe their application got delayed because of power cuts or because of the bombardment. When I was preparing to leave for Oxford I was very scared. I had my visa, my scholarship, my admission but imagine: what will happen if the border doesn’t open? It’s devastating.

I feel I am strengthened by sharing even my vulnerable moments. So, after finishing my PhD, I knew I wanted to write about my experiences, to explain them and to contribute to the understanding. I don’t feel that I am that vulnerable person any more.

What are your plans for the future?

I don’t know what I might be doing after this project. I just hope that I will be doing something meaningful and something that I enjoy every day. I hope that it will be an opportunity for personal growth and for real contribution to the world, to humanity but particularly to Gaza, because I have a passion for Palestinian issues and for the Gaza situation.

I know the feeling of being there and hoping that someone can help, when I myself was not able to help. In 2008, I witnessed the war and it was a life-changing experience for me. You can be sitting at home and not know when or where a bomb might land. It might land in the kitchen or in the living room, so maybe it is safer to move to the kitchen, or maybe to stay put – you simply don’t know. You feel a sense of helplessness: that you are not able to do anything, that your dearest people can be lost in just a minute, that you yourself could be lost and you can’t do anything because it is about policymakers. And I thought how individual life is just seen as trivial, because your whole story, your dreams, your family, your whole life depends on a decision that has or hasn’t been made. I wished that I could come to the table, to participate in decision-making, rather than just waiting for the bomb to fall. So, I hope in the future that I will be able to have a more active role – and I am not talking about politics, but research and education – to be able to do the best I can to help people.