The OLIVE Project is one example of the dynamics that can come into play when the Internet, languages, cultures, and extreme socio-political violence mediate the encounters between academics coming together to work on a shared goal. In their observations about their online collaborations between higher education institutions in the UK and USA and the Islamic University of Gaza, Phipps et al. (2020) point that their reflections “highlight the limitation of multilingual and intercultural encounters when they are deprived of the sensory proximity of face-to-face situations, and what is lost in the translations of languages, practices and experiences from the ‘real’ to the ‘virtual’ world.”
One aspect that our internal evaluation has shown is the “messy realities” (Donaldson et al. 2010) of transnational work. In the context of the OLIVE Project, individual perceptions and experiences of the collaborative and participatory character of the project did not always converge. Some experiences entailed effective collaboration and participation, shared decision-making, open communication, and commitment to incorporating diverse perspectives and feedback, peer support and community spirit, while in others the collaborative working approach was was felt not to be fair or not very smooth. Nichols et al. (2013) put forward an approach through which “participants’ divergent points of view are seen as project resources” so that “moments of tension can serve a pedagogical function.” For them, these “opportunities for learning strengthen people’s commitment to the collaborative process and support the development of mutually beneficial project outcomes”.
Accepting the multiplicity of social realities and the “messiness” of collaborative and transnational work as inherent may be one way towards encouraging mutual learning and engagement. This acceptance does not come with simple solutions nor recipes for success and may instead come with more questions than answers. For instance, Phipps et al. (2020) acknowledge the “significant intercultural challenges” in the encounters between academics in Gaza and the USA, UK and Asia:
"How do we do ‘critical thinking’ in relation to our practices and institutions, the ways in which we show rigour in academic writing, the ways in which we communicate online and its etiquette, the accommodating of different days of rest and work and the flurry of messages on the ‘wrong days’ – all of our different practices nest into, challenge and disrupt our ‘normal’ rhythms of academic life."
Yet, they also refer to these mostly online academic and transnational collaborations as “another stubborn way to be together, despite all odds” (Phipps et al. 2020). This is particularly important at a time of extreme socio-political violence where these collaborations offer precious opportunities for academics to engage in scholarly intercultural work with colleagues in different parts of the world, to visibilize Palestinian education and scholarship within the global community, and to develop tools and programmes which Palestinian teachers and students can rely on in a sustainable way. While collaborative work can be difficult and “push us to our limit”, to use the words of one respondent, it is worthwhile and necessary.
References
Donaldson, Andrew, Ward, Neil, and Bradley, Sue. (2010). Mess Among Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity in Environmental Research. Environ Plan A, 42, 1521-1536.
Nichols, Naomi, Anucha, Uzo, Houwer, Rebecca and Wood, Matt. (2013). Building Equitable Community-Academic Research Collaborations: Learning Together Through Tensions and Contradictions. Gateways: International Journal of Community Research and Engagement, 6, 57-76.
Phipps, Alison, Fassetta, Giovanna, and Al-Masri, Nazmi. (2020). Introduction: Can You ‘Here’ Me? Editors’ Reflections on Online Collaborations between the Gaza Strip and the Global North. In G. Fassetta, N. Al-Masri & A. Phipps (Eds.), Multilingual Online Academic Collaborations as Resistance: Crossing Impassable Borders. Multilingual Maters, pp. 1-14.
*This news item is an adaptation of a longer report-evaluation, based on the analysis of responses to open-ended questionnaires completed by the project participants. The analysis and the report were produced by Doctoral researcher Anais Duong-Peduca (OLIVE technical assistant) and Postdoctoral researcher Marianna Vivitsou (OLIVE project planner).
**The project ended in August 2024. This text is published to round off the project experience -even posthumously.