Zena Agha is an ESRC-funded doctoral candidate at Newcastle University, UK. Her research examines historical and contemporary practices of (counter) mapping in Palestine and the relationship between professional geography, cartography and settler colonialism. Her work situates theoretical frameworks of settler colonialism and decolonisation within a cartographic discourse. She embraces creative and digital methodologies. Zena has received numerous research fellowships and has lectured in disciplines beyond geography, from performance studies to architecture.

Academic Publications

Agha, Z, Counter-Mapping the Archive. (2025), Jadaliyya Roundtable.

Agha, Z, The Dis-Invention of Gaza. (2024) Arab Studies Journal, Fall 2024, VOL. XXXII, no. 2

Agha, Z.,  Esson, J.,  Griffiths, M. &  Joronen, M. (2024)  Gaza: A decolonial geography. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers,  00,  1–13. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12675

Agha, Z, ‘Elegy for Return 1-4’ in Griffiths, M., & Joronen, M. (Eds.). (2023). Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. University of Nebraska Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.8180963

Conferences

August 2024: Royal Geographical Society, London. Chairs Map Room Conversation. Session: Mapping race and internationalism.

August 2023: Royal Geographical Society, London. Panel: Culture and Imperialism Thirty Years On: Reflections on Edward Said’s contribution to Geography

May 2023: Middle East Studies Association Graduate Student Conference, New York. Paper: Colonial Cartography in Palestine-Israel and the Decolonising Potential of Counter-Maps

March 2023: American Association of Geographers, Denver, Colorado. Panel: Geographies of Archival Space: locating Palestine in and through archive’

August 2022: Royal Geographical Society, Newcastle. Panel: De/colonial temporalities in/of Palestine

March 2022: AAG, New York (remote). Film Presentation of ‘The Place that is Ours’

March 2022: Counter-mapping the city (remote). Paper: Colonial Geographies In/Of Palestine

June 2021: Royal Geographical Society, London (remote). Panel: Alternative Methodologies

Research Experience

Spring 2023: Scholar-in-Residence: Cooper Union, Architecture Faculty

Autumn 2022: Visiting Fellow: Harvard University, Centre for Middle Eastern Studies

Summer 2017-2018: Open Access Fellow, Harvard Library

Summer 2017: Summer Fellow, Library Innovation Lab, Harvard Law School