Current PhD Students

Haleemah Alaydi

Thesis Title:

How to Become a Refugee: A Collection of Short Stories and Critical Commentary

Supervisors:

Professor Claire Chambers & Dr Juliana Mensah

Description:

Haleemah’s doctoral thesis investigates the history of the Palestinian refugee experience of forced displacement and statelessness between 1940s and present-day through a short story collection and critical commentary. Her practice-based PhD focuses on exploring the role of fiction on constructing the refugee experience and identity. The research examines how previous works of literature have portrayed the refugee and migrant experience of uprootedness over the past years, particularly those of Palestinian or Arab background. In doing so, this paper contributes to research on refugees within literary studies by offering a rich account of Palestinian diaspora within the Western world and ultimately contributing to the body of Palestinian immigrant fiction.

Her research interests centre around the intersection of literature, race and politics, and the relation between peripatetic notions of identity, place, language, and modes of belonging in contemporary fiction. She takes a multidisciplinary approach that encompasses the fields of diaspora literature, human right studies, critical theory and postcolonial studies. Her doctoral project is fully funded by the Acton-Goodman Scholarship and the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York.

Haleemah holds a BA in Applied Linguistics from the University of Jordan and an MA in Writing for Performance and Publication from the University of Leeds, which was fully funded by Chevening Scholarship. Her short story A Very Private Confession was published by Valley Press in 2021 in an edited short story anthology This New North. Her poems have appeared in The Scribe, and the manuscript for her novel “When Olive Trees Died” was shortlisted for the 2019 Borough Press BAME Open Submission competition. Haleemah has certifications in spoken word poetry and international peace studies. She is a Northern Short Story Festival Academician (2020), a member of UoY Migration Network and an Oxfam International Fellow (2021).