The workshop aims to combine reflections on the ongoing development of Palestinian studies with the recent revival of work on Jordan, in order to examine Jordan's role as a privileged observation point for Palestine, a question that has been relatively unexplored until now. Through three main axes — archives and primary sources preserved in Jordan that enable the study of Palestine, the cross-border circulation of people and knowledge, and intersecting cultural scenes through the notions of identity and authenticity, this workshop aims to lay the groundwork for a transnational and multidisciplinary reflection on Jordan's place in the production of knowledge on Palestine. 

Argument

Palestinian studies have been profoundly shaped by the specific characteristics of Palestine as a subject of research: a fragmented territory, a dispersed population, and often restricted access to fieldwork sites and archives (Guignard & Seurat, 2020; Sfeir 2014; Hanafi & Knudsen 2010). These characteristics have been dramatically exacerbated since 7 October and the ensuing devastating war in Gaza. In the face of intensifying restrictions, material destruction, and epistemic violence, researchers have had to develop original methodologies, critical approaches, and redefine the contours of their field of study (Bontemps et al., 2020; Sorek & Ghanim, 2024), in order to preserve the very conditions of documenting Palestine.As a major host country for Palestinian refugees and a theater of political and social history intertwined with that of Palestine (Abu Odeh 1999; Katz 2005; Massad 2001; Mishal 1978), the Hashemite Kingdom has also become a refuge for research on the other side of the Jordan River. However, beyond this role of relay, Jordan itself has been the recent subject of renewed interest and a revival of social science research. As demonstrated by the recent publication of an entirely Jordan-focused issue, "Nationhood in the Middle East: Jordan as a Case Study" (Benhaida, Mangon, Neveu 2025), a growing number of studies address the country, offering a new and independent interpretation of the Hashemite Kingdom. 

This workshop aims to combine reflections on the ongoing development of Palestinian studies with the recent revival of work on Jordan, in order to examine Jordan's role as a privileged observation point for Palestine, a question that has been relatively unexplored until now.

The workshop “Field practices and epistemological issues, Palestine and Jordan” will therefore raise several questions: what does “Palestine” mean from Jordan? How does this geographical and methodological shift enable new approaches, new corpus and new intellectual exchanges? By bringing together researchers, artists and cultural actors, the event aims to explore the many ways in which Jordan participates in the preservation, transmission, reconfiguration and production of knowledge about Palestine — in both scientific circles and contemporary cultural expressions.

Through three main axes — archives and primary sources preserved in Jordan that enable the study of Palestine, the cross-border circulation of people and knowledge, and intersecting cultural scenes through the notions of identity and authenticity, this workshop aims to lay the groundwork for a transnational and multidisciplinary reflection on Jordan's place in the production of knowledge on Palestine. It is thus part of a dynamic renewal of Palestinian studies, re-evaluating the potential of Jordanian territory, often considered peripheral but essential for thinking about Palestine, in a research context characterized by difficult, and even impossible conditions for conducting research (Calmels et al. 2024; Boumaza & Campana, 2007; Hadj-Moussa 2020). In this context, Jordan appears as a particularly rich space to explore.

Axis 1: Archives, corpus and knowledge production: studying Palestine from Jordanian collections

Jordan’s position as a privileged documentary space for Palestinian studies can be explained by the restricted access to archives located in Palestine, but also by the dynamics of spoliation, fragmentation and even destruction of Palestinian documentary collections by the Israeli authorities (Al-Ghoul, 2020; Budeiri, 2016; Desai & Shahwan 2022; Sela 2017). However, this distinctive feature of Jordan is not only due to its geographical proximity or its place in Palestinian migration paths, but also to a specific historical and institutional configuration. Between 1948 and 1967, during which time the West Bank was administered by the Hashemite Kingdom, the Jordanian authorities undertook a significant effort to collect and preserve documents relating to Palestine. As Philippe Bourmaud (2002) points out, it was Jordanian institutions that ensured the preservation of many Palestinian collections at that time, including religious manuscripts, waqf documents, judicial archives and press collections. These materials, largely preserved at the Centre for Documents, Manuscripts and Studies of the Levant at the University of Jordan [markaz al-wathā’iq wa almakhṭūṭāt wa dirāsāt bilād al-shām], represent a major historiographical resource to be questioned and contextualized (Naïli 2015; Raymond, Naïli & Nakhlé-Cerruti, 2025; Sharara & Tell, 2025).

In addition to these explicitly Palestinian archives, there are also collections produced by the Jordanian state itself: royal and ministerial archives, parliamentary debates, official journal, etc. This documentary production took place within the context of a unified administrative framework between the two banks of the Jordan River, established between 1950 and 1967 (and partially maintained until its formal rupture by King Hussein in 1988). During this period, Jordan and the West Bank were placed under a ‘common political [and administrative] umbrella’ (Naïli 2024: 15), giving rise to institutional documentation that provides insight into the Jordanian state's approach to governing the West Bank.

These documentary collections, which are still relatively underused by researchers (Al-Shraah & Zahir 2022; Banc-Lévêque 2025; Katz 2005), nevertheless constitute a valuable resource for the renewal of Palestinian studies. However, their use raises a number of difficulties and limits (Jungen & Sfeir 2019; Rogan 1989). Access to these archives remains subject to local institutional constraints (selectivity of accessible collections, lack of a clear policy on availability), as well as tensions between Jordanian and Palestinian national narratives.

This first theme proposes to examine the conditions of production, preservation and access to archives in Jordan, with an emphasis on their potential contribution to the renewal of Palestinian studies. What types of knowledge can these sources help to construct? What biases, silences or competing narratives do they convey? And how can researchers make use of them while considering the memorial, institutional and political dynamics that structure their use? The aim will be to reflect on the ways in which this digression through Amman provides access to unexplored aspects of Palestinian history, thereby contributing to a methodological, archival and epistemological renewal of Palestinian studies.

Axis 2: Circulations and Borders

Studying borders requires moving beyond nation-state-centric approaches to consider them from a regional or transnational perspective. From this point, Bocco and Meier (2005) invite us to deconstruct fixed representations and symbolic barriers associated with borders in order to grasp their processual dimension. Applied to the Jordanian-Palestinian context, this approach highlights the difficulty of using traditional analytical frameworks. The work of Meier (2017) and Vignal (2020) shows that the classic legal interpretation — based on the idea of a demarcation line between sovereignties — tends to naturalize divisions that are often inherited from colonial logics, such as the Sykes-Picot agreements. This vision produces a “territorial trap” (Vignal 2017: 9), which freezes affiliations and obscures the dynamics of movement and transformation.

In the Jordanian case, the history of migration, successive identity recompositions and cross-border mobility challenge any unified vision of the border (Bocco & Chatelard 2001). The hosting of Palestinian refugees since 1948, the flow of workers and the daily practice of crossing the Jordan River (Bontemps 2014) complicate state sovereignty and highlight the need to think of the border as a space that is crossed, regulated and disputed. These observations point towards methodological approaches capable of capturing the plurality of forms that the border takes legally, socially, economically and symbolically. This involves combining qualitative approaches (interviews, ethnographies, life stories) with a critical stance in order to better understand the logics of control, categorization and resistance. The concept of “mobile borders” (Amilhat-Szary & Giraut 2015) thus allows us to think of the border as a set of shifting mechanisms rather than a simple line. Paying attention to differentiated administrative statuses and control regimes calls for a refined methodology capable of accounting for the concrete effects of these policies on the populations concerned.

This axis therefore proposes to examine exchanges between Jordan and Palestine and to question the various concepts surrounding the notion of borders. The aim will be to propose methodological tools for approaching the various concepts surrounding the Jordanian-Palestinian border. This raises several questions: how can we move beyond a strictly national approach to analyzing the Jordanian-Palestinian border? What analytical frameworks can be used to deconstruct fixed representations of the border? How can the legal, social and identity dimensions be articulated in the study of a border? What methodological tools can be used to understand everyday practices of crossing and mobility? How can political subjectivation in border areas be examined? What methodologies can be used to understand the border as a space of power? These various questions will be addressed within this research axis in order to develop issues relating to the movement of goods and people across the Jordan River.

Axis 3: Cultures, Identities and Authenticity

The combined study of creative processes and creative contexts of cultural and artistic dynamics in Palestine, particularly from the Jordanian perspective, raises a number of methodological questions that deserve careful consideration. How can we analyze identities that are constructed in a liminal space, marked by exile, historical heritage and territorial reconfiguration? Identity, conceived as a process of differentiation and identification, cannot be isolated from the social and political contexts in which it is produced. El Sakka (2010) emphasizes that individualization in these societies is developed through collective interactions, via processes of cultural appropriation that do not necessarily follow linear or homogeneous logic. This observation invites us to question the tools used to understand cultural forms that are in tension, constantly evolving and often subject to multiple circulations.

The Palestinian presence in Jordan complicates the relationship between national inclusion and cultural differentiation. Artistic and memorial expressions linked to this presence are not only testimonies of exile, but also contribute to the transformation of Jordanian cultural spaces. We could also discuss the relationship between folklore and institutions and their audiences, and their contribution to shaping representations of Palestine in Jordan. However, this intertwining raises the question of the place these narratives occupy in the collective memory, and the conditions under which they are visible, recognized or marginalized. Can we really speak of a shared cultural space, or should we rather think in terms of overlaps, intersections, or even frictions between identity registers?

Fariji's work (2023) questions the limits of a postcolonial approach that tends to freeze Arab artists in a univocal relationship with the West. In the Jordanian-Palestinian case, cultural productions seem rather to reflect a complex interplay between traditional heritage, contemporary borrowings and critical reinterpretations. These hybrid forms, observable in the visual arts, music, literature and cinema, sometimes draw on broader historical imaginaries, such as that of Bilad al-Sham, without it always being possible to determine whether this is a political project, a simple aesthetic register or an attempt to reconstruct memory. Here again, methodology is challenged: how can these regional references be understood without perpetuating a unified and a historical reading of cultural affiliations?

Exploring these dynamics therefore requires constant attention to the way in which actors — artists, writers, thinkers — mobilize available cultural resources to reconfigure their positions, sometimes in response to political or social constraints. However, we must not be too quick to assume the existence of a cultural dialogue or symbolic continuity between Jordan and Palestine. What is at stake, perhaps, has more to do with situated negotiations, occasional attempts at identity reinvention, and selective and sometimes fragile forms of circulation. The methodological challenge is therefore to document these processes without seeking to stabilize them or attribute to them a coherence that they do not necessarily claim.

Thus, the following issues will be highlighted in this axis: To what extent do Palestinian cultural expressions in Jordan contribute to a shared collective memory, and how can they be (re)constructed, recognized or invisibilized depending on the political context? How can we avoid the analysis of Arab artistic productions perpetuating a reductive postcolonial reading that would lock them into a binary opposition to the Western model? What methodological approach should be adopted to study cultural interactions between Jordanians and Palestinians without artificially projecting the idea of harmonious dialogue or identity continuity? This theme can be explored through exchanges between researchers and actors from the Palestinian and Jordanian cultural scenes. 

Submission guidelines

Proposals (350–500 words), accompanied by a short biographical note (5–8 lines), should be sent to Raphaël Banc-Lévêque [raphael.banc-leveque@univ-eiffel.fr] and Thomas Michel [thomas.michel1999@hotmail.com].

Deadline for submission: 27 March 2026

Workshop date: 4 June 2026

Scientific Committee

• Raphaël Banc-Lévêque (Gustave Eiffel University - Ifpo)
• Kamel Doraï (CNRS - MEAE - Ifpo)
• Agnes Favier (MEAE - Ifpo)
• Mariangela Gasparotto (MEAE - Ifpo)
• Christine Jungen (CNRS - Ifpo)
• Soraya El Kahlaoui (MEAE - Ifpo)
• Thomas Michel (Paris Cité University - Ifpo)
• Najla Nakhle-Cerruti (CNRS – MEAE - Ifpo)

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