Lila Sharif

Dr. Lila Sharif is a creative writer, researcher and assistant professor at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation. Her research links themes of displacement and Indigenous cultural resurgence for Palestinians in the homeland and diaspora. Her current project is a book about the ways in which fair trade economies, settler colonialism, environmental destruction and storytelling converge at Palestine’s historic olive tree, which has been harvested by Palestinians for over 6,000 years. Through a transnational Palestinian Indigenous methodology that integrates food, land and Palestinian cultural production, Sharif develops the concept of Vanishment as an Indigenous critique of capitalism and settler colonialism. Sharif researches and publishes on environmental justice, Indigenous epistemologies, Palestinian cultural production, and ethnic and racial studies. Recently Sharif co-edited a special issue of Amerasia on the topic of Critical Refugee Studies alongside Yen Le Espiritu, and co-authored the book Departures (UC Press, 2022), which charts the field of Critical Refugee Studies. She has a co-authored anthology forthcoming with Duke University Press entitled, Detours: A Decolonial Guidebook to Historic Palestine, which reimagines a decolonial Palestine through the words and art of Palestinian scholars, artists, alternative tour guides and allies. She is a co-founding member of the Critical Refugee Studies Collective as well as a founding member of the Palestinian Feminist Collective. Sharif is the first Palestinian to earn a Ph.D. in ethnic studies, which she earned alongside a Ph.D. in Sociology from University of California San Diego.