Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow
Academic Year 2025-26
Mazen earned his PhD from Queen's University Belfast, examining the concept of Archaeolopolitics in the Making of the Palestinian National Spatial Plan, with funding from the Palestinian American Research Center and Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland. Mazen is currently working with Brian Boyd, Jamal Barghouth, and other scholars on the Archaeology of the Nakba project, "From Memory to Place."
Mazen Iwaisi will be working on his first book project, Archive, Curation and Storage: The Untold Story of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities. The book examines the hidden history of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities since its establishment in the aftermath of the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, tracing its foundation, evolution, and the complex challenges it faced in preserving Palestinian cultural heritage under changing political circumstances. Drawing on extensive archival research and fieldwork, the study reveals how the department navigated colonial and post-colonial pressures while attempting to maintain custody of Palestine's archaeological record and cultural patrimony. The book explores how archaeological institutions and their archives become sites of political contestation, examining the department's efforts to document, preserve, and curate Palestinian heritage amid ongoing displacement and territorial fragmentation. Iwaisi demonstrates how the department's work represented both bureaucratic necessity and cultural resistance, revealing the politics embedded in seemingly neutral acts of curation and preservation. More specifically, the study investigates how institutional knowledge was preserved, transferred, or lost during periods of crisis. The book contributes to broader conversations about heritage preservation under Israeli military occupation, the politics of archaeological knowledge, and the role of cultural institutions in maintaining collective memory and identity.
