Dr Ashjan Ajour鈥檚 research focuses on decolonial global sociology, feminist theory, forced displacement, embodied protest and political subjectivity, examining how struggles for justice emerge through embodied resistance, incarceration, and displacement. She investigates gendered experiences of forced displacement, particularly refugee women, integrating feminist, intersectional, and decolonial perspectives. Her work develops decolonial feminist ethnography as both a methodological and theoretical framework that centres lived experiences, participatory approaches, and intersectional analysis.
She also leads initiatives in curriculum transformation and decolonising pedagogy, co-creating evidence-based sociology curricula that embed student voices, Global South perspectives, and inclusive learning practices. Her research is interdisciplinary, bridging sociology, anthropology, politics, and gender studies, and is strongly focused on translating scholarship into impact, including curriculum innovation, national and international dissemination, and sector-wide debates on decolonial and inclusive pedagogy.
Dr Ashjan Ajour welcome PhD proposals related to the research areas mentioned on her profile page. She serves an external examiner for PhDs at UK and international universities.
2026 and 2025 Peer-Reviewed Publications, and Forthcoming -In Press.
- Ajour, Ashjan (2026). 鈥淭he Bridge of Return: Palestinian Hunger Strikes as Embodied Anti-Colonial Resistance鈥�. South Atlantic, Special Issue: Hunger Strikes in Comparative Perspective.
- Ajour, Ashjan (2026). 鈥淓motions as Feminist Resistance: Collective Healing and the Power of Vulnerability: Reflections from the Emma Goldman Award in Vienna鈥�. Feminist Review. SAGE Publishing.
- Ajour, Ashjan (2026) 鈥淔eminist Foreign Policy and Feminist Solidarity: An Intersectional Critique of Support for Women in the Gaza Genocide.鈥� In Feminist Foreign Policy: Energy & Resistance, edited by Columba Achilleos-Sarll, Toni Haastrup, and Jennifer Thomson. Bristol University Press.
- Ajour, Ashjan (2025). 鈥淕rief as Feminist Praxis: Love, Loss, and Memory in Resistance.鈥� Feminist Theories. SAGE Publishing
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- Ajour, Ashjan (2025). 鈥淪torytelling from the Heart:听A Feminist Decolonizing Humanism鈥�. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Duke University Press. Special issue: Indigenous Feminisms Across the World.
- Ajour, Ashjan (2025). 鈥淯nveiling the Colonial Violence of Space in the Gaza Genocide鈥�. European Journal of Cultural Studies. SAGE Publishing.
- Ababneh, S., Ajour, A., Aldossari, M., Jabiri, A., Nusa, I., Pratt, N., & Shoman, H. (2025). 鈥淲hy Palestine is a Feminist Issue: A Reckoning with Western Feminism in a Time of Genocide.鈥� International Feminist Journal of Politics. Taylor & Francis Group.
- Shoman, H., Ajour, A., Ababneh, S., Jabiri, A., Pratt, N., Repo, J., & Aldossari, M. (2025). Feminist silences in the face of Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people: A call for decolonial praxis against complicity. Gender, Work & Organization, 32(3), 1鈥�17.
- Ajour, Ashjan (2026, forthcoming). 鈥�Spatial Displacement and the Loss of Home in the Genocide of Gaza鈥� In Spaces and Infrastructures of Terror and Resistance in Palestine. In Palgrave Macmillan.
- Ajour, Ashjan (2026, forthcoming). 鈥淓rasing Place, Resisting Memory in the Ongoing Nakba in Gaza Genocide鈥� 鈥� in Critical Indigenous Memory Studies, part of Bloomsbury Academic鈥檚 Critical Memory Studies series.
Since 2021 she has published a range of scholarly outputs, including books, journal articles, and collaborative policy reports reflecting both theoretical and applied research on decolonial methodologies, feminist ethnographic approaches, and ethnographies of embodied protest and political subjectivity in colonized contexts.
Books
- Ajour, A. (2021). Reclaiming Humanity: The Formation of Political Subjectivity in the Experience of Palestinian Hunger Strikers in Israeli Prisons. Palgrave Macmillan. Winner of the 2022 Palestine Academic Book Award.
- Ajour, A. (2014). The Representations of Power and Knowledge in the Discourse of Liberal Women鈥檚 Organizations in the Post Oslo period. Muwatin (The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy), Ramallah, Palestine.
Articles, chapters and policy reports
Before joining academia, Ashjan gained over 10 years鈥� experience working with international development agencies in Middle East, managing programs for organisations such as the German Development Organisation (GIZ), the Swedish Organisation for Individual Relief (SOIR), and other local and international organisations in Palestine. This hands-on experience in complex political and conflict-affected environments informs听Ashjan's听teaching, allowing her to ground political theory in real-world contexts through case studies and examples from international development practice.
