Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, joins Professor Emeritus Avi Shlaim in conversation, to open the Middle East Centre’s 2026-27 public events programme.
Chaired by Professor Eugene Rogan (St Anthony's College)
Francesca Albanese is an international lawyer specialising in human rights and the Middle East. Since May 2022 she has served as the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories Occupied since 1967. An affiliate scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_the_Study_of_International_Migration> at Georgetown University<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown_University>, Albanese is the author of publications including the Palestinian Refugees in International Law (OUP, 2020) and more recently J'accuse published in 2024. Her academic works cover various aspects of the question of Palestine, the legal situation in Israel, Palestine and Palestinian Forced Displacement including the mandate and the work of the United Nations' Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees, better known as UNRWA<https://unrwa.org/>. Since 2018 Albanese has taught and lectured at various universities in Europe and the Middle East. She is also responsible for the research and legal assistance programme on migration and asylum seekers in the Arab World; for the think-tank Arab Renaissance for Democracy and Development (ARDD); and is co-founder of the Global Network on the Question of Palestine. Prior to her scholarly engagement she has worked with international organisations including the Office of the High Commission of Human Rights and the Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees. As Special Rapporteur, she has published numerous legal opinions and several major reports on violations of the law of self-determination in the Occupied Palestine Territories in 2022, on the widespread and systematic mass depravation of liberty of Palestinians in 2023 and on the theme of Unchilding, violating childhood in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2023, as well as Genocide in 2024, 2 reports.
Avi Shlaim is Professor Emeritus of International Relations at the University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow of St Antony's College and the Middle East Centre, which has been his intellectual home since 1987. He is author of many publications on Israel and the Arab World, including Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement, and the Partition of Palestine (1988); The Politics of Partition (1990 and 1998); War and Peace in the Middle East: A Concise History (1995); The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World (2000, second edition 2014); Lion of Jordan: King Hussein's Life in War and Peace (2007). His most recently published book is Three Worlds: Memoirs of an Arab-Jew (2023). He has also penned a number of essays for leading literary and scholarly journals that are gathered together into 2 books: Israel and Palestine (2009) and most recently Genocide in Gaza, for which Francesca wrote the Preface. Avi is one of the most influential public intellectuals of the Middle East and Britain today.
