Dr. Bayan AlAmmouri (University of Jordan), Dr. Lindsey Moore (Lancaster University), and Dr. Mohammed Hamdan (An-Najah National University) recently participated together in a panel at the BRISMES Conference, where they presented their latest research from the project Countermapping Urban Palestine. The panel introduced the project’s aims and methods, highlighting its focus on creatively “countermapping” Palestinian cities through narrative, memory, and spatial storytelling.

The panel rationale emphasized that while Nablus serves as the pilot site—given its historical role as a trade centre and a hub of anti-colonial resistance—the project ultimately seeks to countermapping cities across 1948 Palestine. The panel addressed the gap between historical/geographical studies and literary representations of Palestinian place, arguing for the importance of fiction, autobiography, oral narratives, myths, and other commemorative practices in shaping spatial understanding. Drawing on place-theory, literary cartography, and memory studies, the project positions maps as narrative templates that both reflect and construct lived geographies, invoking Edward Said’s notion of “countermemory” as a moral imperative in the face of continuous catastrophe.

Each researcher presented a paper tied to the project’s broader goals:
“Narrating Cartography: Countermapping Urban Palestine through Geovisualization in Atef Abu Saif’s Don’t Look Left (2024) and Yara Hawari’s The Stone House (2021)” by Dr. Bayan AlAmmouri (University of Jordan).
“Narrative, Myth, and the Conceptualization of Space: Nablus City as a Case Study” by Dr. Mohammed Hamdan (An-Najah National University of Palestine).
“Memorography: Mapping the Mind’s Terrain” by Dr. Lindsey Moore (Lancaster University).​​