Our patrons

Iain Chalmers made his first visit to Palestine in 1963, while still a medical student. Reading about Palestine’s history while travelling there, he learned how Britain had betrayed and continues to betray the people of Palestine. In 1969 and 1970 he went to work for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) as a medical officer in the refugee camp in Khan Younis, in the Gaza Strip.  He has returned to Gaza at intervals since 1970, most recently in 2017. He is personal assistant to Jehan Alfarra and Jan Chalmers (his wife), project co-chairs of the Palestinian History Tapestry Project.

Dr Mahmoud Hawari is an academic, activist, university professor and former Director General of the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit, Palestine. He taught at Bethlehem, Birzeit, al-Quds and Oxford universities. His primary research interests are in Medieval archaeology of Palestine and the Middle East, and Palestinian cultural heritage. He has widely published in his field of specialisation. 

Stephen Sedley, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, was a member of the British lawyers' delegation which in 2011, with Government funding, visited Israel and the West Bank and produced the report 'Children in Military Custody'. As a practising lawyer he specialised in public law and human rights law. He continues to write on legal issues.

Karma Nabulsi is an academic, writer, and political organiser. She is Fellow in Politics at St Edmund Hall and teaches at the University of Oxford.  In 2017 she won the Guardian Higher Education Inspiring Leader award, in 2018 the Arab Woman of the Year, and in 2019 the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Award for The Palestinian Revolution, a bilingual digital humanities teaching and research resource, developed with scholars across the global South.

Karma is the patron of the London Palestine Film Festival, a patron of PSC, and co-founder of the HOPING Foundation.

Avi Shlaim is an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was born in Baghdad and grew up in Israel, and has been at Oxford since 1987. His books include War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2014); Lion of Jordan: The Life of King Hussein in War and Peace (2007); and Israel and Palestine: Reappraisals, Revisions, Refutations (2009). Professor Shlaim is a frequent contributor to newspapers and commentator on radio and television on Middle Eastern affairs. 

Yasmin Sidhwa FRSA is Artistic Director of Mandala Theatre Company, an Oxford based, national and international touring company that creates visceral theatre giving a voice to those whose stories are not heard and offering pathways to young people from BAME and White working-class backgrounds into the arts. Yasmin was founder and Director of MESH International Theatre Festival in Oxford, and with colleagues at Pegasus Theatre, brought over a group of young people from Gaza in 2011 to participate in the Festival. Since then she has supported young people from Palestine, fundraising to bring them to Oxford to participate and perform.