Profile
Mona Beiling new

Mona BIELING

PhD Researcher in International History and Politics
Spoken languages
German, English, Dutch, French, Hebrew
Areas of expertise
  • Environmental history and the history of environmentalisms
  • Imperial History
  • Global history
Geographical Region of Expertise
  • Israel
  • Palestine
  • Western Europe

PhD Thesis

 

Title: Landscape and Power in Mandate Palestine, 1917-1948

PhD Supervisor & Co-supervisor: Cyrus Schayegh and Susanna Hecht

Expected completion date: 2023

My dissertation argues that man-made landscape changes are crucial for understanding human relationships in colonial/imperial spaces, including in nascent conflict zones such as Palestine-Israel. Landscape changes in mandatory Palestine influenced both Zionist-Arab and Zionist-British relationships by manifesting and transferring power and revealing underlying cultural convictions and political goals. Both Zionist ideology and the British imperial worldview became imprinted onto the Palestinian environment through, for example, afforestation and soil erosion policies. I show this based on four different case studies: land reclamation techniques, forestry, the Dead Sea development, and botanical gardens.

 

Research Interests

 

  • Colonial Networks
  • Imperial Botany
  • Minority-Majority Relations
  • Nationalism
  • History of Science
  • Multispecies relations 

 

Relevant Publications and Works

 

Peer reviewed: ‘The Ambivalent Legacy of Minority Protection for Human Rights’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, August 2021, with Emmanuel Dalle Mulle.

‘British Environmental Orientalism and the Palestinian Goat, 1917-1948’, Diyâr. Journal of Ottoman, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies 3 (2022) 1, 67-84. 

Other: ‘Homogenising Tendencies: Majority-Minority Relations in Italy, Spain and Belgium from Versailles to the Second World War’, Current Affairs in Perspective, Pierre du Bois Foundation, no. 2 February 2020. With Emmanuel Dalle Mulle.

‘Palestinians in Purgatory: The Internally Displaced Citizens of Israel’, Middle East Eye, 8 July 2016. Translated into French, Spanish; ‘Rückkehr ausgeschlossen’, Qantara, 7 December 2016

‘Palestine Potash Limited: Industrial Development in Mandatory Palestine and the Infrastructure of Zionism’, TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 08 September 2021.

 

Academic Work Experience

 

Teaching Experience

Teaching Assistant at the Graduate Institute’s International History and Politics department

Research Assistant for the SNSF-funded project "The Myth of Homogeneity. Minority Protection and Assimilation in Western Europe, 1919-1939" 

 

Fellowships, Grants and Awards

 

  • Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences, travel grant, 2022
  • Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, excellence scholarship, academic years 2020/21, 2021/22
  • Swiss National Science Foundation, Gender Equality Grant, 2019
  • European Association for Israel Studies, travel grant, 2019
  • World Union of Jewish Studies, ULPAN scholarship, 2018
  • Pierre du Bois Foundation, travel grant, 2018
  • Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, full scholarship, academic year 2015/16 and 2016/17

 

Links

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