Interview with Ruba Salih, by Nadeem Karkabi and Sonia Boulos

On the occasion of publishing a special issue of Palestine/ Israel Review (PIR) on the decolonization of the city of Haifa, PIR interviewed Ruba Salih, a professor of anthropology at the Department of Arts, University of Bologna. Salih’s research focuses on transnational migration and diasporas across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa; Islam and gender; the Palestine question and refugees; and trauma and conflict in the Middle East. She is the author of numerous academic works, including the book Gender in Transnationalism: Home, Longing and Belonging among Moroccan (Routledge, 2003), and the article “Bodies That Walk, Bodies That Talk, Bodies That Love: Palestinian Women Refugees, Affectivity, and the Politics of the Ordinary” (Antipode, 2017). Currently, she is working on a book on waiting and the politics of return among Palestinian refugees (Cambridge University Press). Ruba herself is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee from Haifa, and her mother was born in Yafa/Jaffa. PIR held an interview with her to talk about her work and her own experience of refuge as a descendant of Palestinian refugees from Haifa. Nadeem Karkabi and Sonia Boulos conducted the interview for PIR.