Trinity lecturer Dr Brendan Browne has been awarded a €500,000 research grant for a project that will examine humanitarian conditions for Palestinian Bedouin people living in the West Bank.
The two-year project will focus on the E1 area of the West Bank. The territory has been the expansion of Israeli settlements – a move condemned as a “flagrant violation under international law” by the UN’s Security Council.
Browne, an assistant professor in Trinity’s School of Religion, was awarded the funding from a collaborative research body in the UK, made up of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Department for International Development.
The grant will fund fieldwork and community outreach with Palestinian Bedouin living in the area, as well as two academic conferences and an edited book on the project.
Browne – who also founded internship programme in Trinity that sees College interns travel to Jerusalem to document Israeli abuses there – will participate a project that will see researchers gathering first-hand testimonies of everyday life for the Palestinian Bedouin community in E1.
In a press statement, Browne said the grant “will allow for important collaborative research with members of the Palestinian Bedouin community who are at risk of forcible transfer in the West Bank”.
He added that the nature of the programme means its impact “is felt both locally and at the International Criminal Court”.
He’ll work with researchers from Queen’s University Belfast, Liverpool’s John Moores University and Al Quds University – the only Palestinian university in Jerusalem – on the project.
In May 2017, at a ceremony in Jerusalem, Trinity’s School of Ecumenics signed a memorandum of understanding – the College’s first with a Palestinian university – with the Al Quds University Human Rights Clinic.
In 2019, in an interview with The University Times, Browne said the time he spent as an assistant professor of law in Al Quds University was “the most formative moment I’ve ever had”.
In 2018/19, Browne won the Provost’s teaching award. He was shortlisted for the College’s inaugural Civic Engagement award in 2017/18, and nominated in 2019.
