Biography

Adila Laïdi-Hanieh is a cultural critic and writer with interest in Palestinian arts and cultural practices, modern Arab intellectual history, and cultural spaces and processes.

She published in 2008 the first cultural review of contemporary Palestine, which commissioned texts and art work from confirmed and emerging artists, novelists and poets from Palestine and elsewhere: Palestine: Rien ne nous Manque ici (Palestine: We Lack for Nothing Here). It is the first book to study contemporary Palestine in an ‘introspective, multidisciplinary, and critical manner’.

Laïdi-Hanieh ran the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre in Ramallah from its 1996 establishment until 2005. She curated there in 2001 the international touring memorial art exhibition 100 Shaheed-100 Lives. Her work was covered by the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, Le Monde, CNN, the Daily Star, Al-Hayat, Moustaqbal TV, etc. She received on March 8, 2005 the “International Woman’s Day Award” from Bethlehem University.

Her essays and reviews have appeared in the Journal of Palestine Studies, Contemporary Practices, l’Art-Même and Weghat Nazar. She researches theories of ideology, post colonial arts and culture, aesthetic regimes and political art, and Arab modernization processes.

She taught from 2006 to 2008 Arab intellectual history, and the first course on Palestinian arts at Bir Zeit University. She won in 2008 a Fulbright scholarship to study for a PhD in Cultural Studies at George Mason University.

Laïdi-Hanieh is a cofounder of a number of arts and culture organizations and foundations –on which governing boards’ she served-, such as: The Arab Fund for Arts & Culture (Amman) , Al-Mawred al-Thaqafy [Cultural Resource] (Cairo) , the Khalil Sakakini Cultural Centre Foundation (Ramallah) , and Shashat (Ramallah) . She was part of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Young Arab Leaders’ initiative and a member of its Council of 100 Leaders of Islam-West Dialogue (2002-2005). She was a member of the organizing committee of the 2008-09 MASARAT Palestinian cultural season in Belgium , and is a member of AMCA, the Association for Modern & Contemporary Art of the Arab World, Iran & Turkey (Denton, TX) .

She was born in Algeria and was educated there and in Jordan, where she studied painting with Fahr el Nissa Zeid. She earned a Certificat d’Études Politiques from the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris, before completing her B.A.in International Relations from the United States International University (Alliant U.) in Mexico City, and her M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University. She divides her time between Virginia, Ramallah and Algiers.