Islam al Khatib is a PhD student in Social Research Methods, supervised by Professsor Flora Cornish and Dr Sara Salem.

Islam is a Palestinian refugee researcher born and raised in Lebanon; Islam’s work is grounded in anti-colonial knowledge production. Her PhD examines surveillance as an academic infrastructure embedded in research methodologies on what are often categorized as ‘marginalized communities,’ with a particular focus on Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Her research seeks to co-create community-driven research infrastructures that center people’s own knowledge. This project serves as both a methodological intervention and an act of counter-researching academia.

Beyond her doctoral work, Islam is engaged in research on surveillance capitalism and the ‘Technocene,’ exploring how cyber and digital infrastructures entrench fascist, colonial, and imperial projects. She is particularly interested in the entanglement of tech and defense industries and the ways these connections extend systems of control.