Leila Farsakh

Leila Farsakh (ليلى فرسخ) (born 1967) is a Palestinian political economist who was born in Jordan and is a Professor of Political Science at University of Massachusetts Boston. Her area of expertise is Middle East Politics, Comparative Politics, and the Politics of the Arab-Israeli Conflict. Farsakh holds a MPhil from the University of Cambridge, UK (1990) and a PhD from the University of London (2003).

Farsakh conducted post-doctoral research at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and was a research affiliate at the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She has worked with a number of organizations, including the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris (1993 - 1996) and the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah (1998 - 1999).

In 2001, she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Farsakh was member of the editorial Board for the Journal Of Palestine Studies (2008-2020) and was the Project Co-Director for Jerusalem 2050, a problem-solving project jointly sponsored by Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Center for International Studies. She has written extensively on issues related to the Palestinian economy and the Oslo peace process, international migration and regional integration.

Farsakh was also a member of the Board at the non-governmental organization RESIST, founded in 1967 to provide grant money and support to grassroots movements advocating for social change.

Books (partial list)

 * Palestinian Labour Migration to Israel: Labour, Land, and Occupation (2005). Taylor & Francis Ltd, United Kingdom. ISBN 0-415-33356-3.
 * Development Strategies, Employment and International Migration, (co-edited with David O’Connor), OECD Development Center Publications, Paris, 1996.
 * Palestinian Employment in Israel: 1967-1997 Ramallah, 1998.
 * Commemorating the Naksa, Evoking the Nakba, (guest editor), Electronic Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Spring 2008, MIT, Boston, 2008.
 * The Arab and Jewish Questions: Geographies of Engagement in Palestine and Beyond, (co-edited with Bashir Bashir), Columbia University Press, 2020.
 * Rethinking Statehood in Palestine: Self-Determination and Decolonization Beyond Partition, University of California Press, 2021.

Articles (partial list)

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 * (co-authored with Elora Chowdhury)
 * (co-authored with Elora Chowdhury and Rajini Srikanth)
 * (also published as: )
 * (co-author)
 * (co-authored with Elora Chowdhury)
 * (co-authored with Elora Chowdhury and Rajini Srikanth)
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 * (co-authored with Elora Chowdhury)
 * (co-authored with Elora Chowdhury and Rajini Srikanth)
 * (co-authored with Elora Chowdhury and Rajini Srikanth)

Public lectures

 * "Palestinian Labor Flow to Israel: Is it Over?", at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, 19 February 2002.
 * Palestinian Perspective, Chomsky Lecture on Middle East Crises, December 14, 2000
 * Beyond Apartheid in Israel/Palestine: The Reality on the Ground & Lessons from South Africa, at Northeastern University in Boston, 19 November 2006.
 * Notes on Analogy: Israel and Apartheid, at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University, 16 March 2007.