Zeena Zakharia
Biographic Data
| ID | 1246850 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zeena Zakharia |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zeena |
| FAMILY NAME | Zakharia |
| SIGNATURE | ZAKHARIA Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Maryland, College Park |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1238-1985 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 17 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Teaching Palestine
“Beyond Seeking Permission
In 2024, Harvard Educational Review invited scholars to submit articles for a special issue on Education and Palestine. Working with a group of six collaborators led by Zeena Zakharia, a Palestinia
From Capacity Building to Mutual Learning
This article offers insights into partnerships that support refugee teachers to adapt and sustain teaching and learning despite multiple compounding obstacles spurred by political and economic crises, disaster, and COVID-19. Drawing from a 3-year study of Syria refugee education in Lebanon (2018–21), I focus on one dimension of partnership that emerged from a dataset comprising 58 interviews and 31 site visits and observations of partnership acti…
Thinking across Research on Migration and Education
Revisiting Inclusion
This article explores the concept of inclusive education in contexts of forced displacement, where refugeehood intersects with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), as well as gender, poverty, and overlapping forms of discrimination. Drawing on extensive engagement with a refugee-led, non-formal educational organization in Lebanon, we revisit inclusion for refugee children with SEND through a bottom-up lens. We consider inclusion wit…
Reimagining education in emergencies
Partnerships for education in emergencies
Reconsidering partnerships in education in emergencies
International actors increasingly advocate for partnerships in education in emergencies (EiE) to address the dire educational opportunities of school-aged children in sites of disaster, armed conflict, forced migration, and other humanitarian crises. This study explores the nature of partnerships in EiE. We examine the impetus behind an expansion of partnerships among diverse global actors and key characteristics, relationships, and dynamics with…
Policy networks in refugee education
This paper presents a social network analysis of partnerships in refugee education and shows how relationships between organisations change in response to multiple crises, including political and economic crises, disaster, and COVID-19. We draw insights from an original database of 440 state and nonstate entities engaged in Syria refugee education in Lebanon (2018–2021). We find that partnerships in refugee education comprise a complex web of glo…
White Ignorance in Global Education
In this qualitative research essay, Francine Menashy and Zeena Zakharia advance Charles Mills’s concept of White ignorance for understanding racial power hierarchies in global education governance. They reveal how global education organizations “sanitize racial inequities and silence conversations on race” and how in global education racism has been largely considered a US-based problem, which denies the fact that White supremacy is a global syst…
Crisis Upon Crisis
This study applies a critical political economy approach to understand the tensions, contradictions, and inequities that emerged when COVID-19 altered narratives and practices in education in emergencies, at the global policy level and within the local context of Syria refugee education in Lebanon. Through a vertical case study methodology, our research offers insights into a setting in which global organizations and actors sought to address the …
Closing questions
Language and (in)securitization
Spurred in part by violent conflict and natural disaster, the surge in global migration calls for renewed attention to the central role of language in everyday (in)securitization. In this brief response, I draw on my work in the Middle East and among Arabic-speaking populations in the United States to offer some illustration of the instantiation of global, macro-processes of (in)securitization and surveillance in the everyday micro-practices of s…
Maybe that’s how they learned in the past, but we don’t learn like this today’
Language, conflict, and migration
Focusing on the educational efforts of a diverse ethnolinguistic community, this article considers the rationales, mechanisms, and channels adopted by Arabic-speaking communities in the US to teach and learn the Arabic language. The article draws on research conducted with a number of Arabic speaking populations in New York to situate Arabic language education in the US within the transnational context of conflict and migration. By employing a tr…
Reimagining education in emergencies
Language and (in)securitization
Spurred in part by violent conflict and natural disaster, the surge in global migration calls for renewed attention to the central role of language in everyday (in)securitization. In this brief response, I draw on my work in the Middle East and among Arabic-speaking populations in the United States to offer some illustration of the instantiation of global, macro-processes of (in)securitization and surveillance in the everyday micro-practices of s…
Maybe that’s how they learned in the past, but we don’t learn like this today’
Partnerships for education in emergencies
Crisis Upon Crisis
This study applies a critical political economy approach to understand the tensions, contradictions, and inequities that emerged when COVID-19 altered narratives and practices in education in emergencies, at the global policy level and within the local context of Syria refugee education in Lebanon. Through a vertical case study methodology, our research offers insights into a setting in which global organizations and actors sought to address the …
Closing questions
Language, conflict, and migration
Focusing on the educational efforts of a diverse ethnolinguistic community, this article considers the rationales, mechanisms, and channels adopted by Arabic-speaking communities in the US to teach and learn the Arabic language. The article draws on research conducted with a number of Arabic speaking populations in New York to situate Arabic language education in the US within the transnational context of conflict and migration. By employing a tr…
Language, conflict, and migration
Focusing on the educational efforts of a diverse ethnolinguistic community, this article considers the rationales, mechanisms, and channels adopted by Arabic-speaking communities in the US to teach and learn the Arabic language. The article draws on research conducted with a number of Arabic speaking populations in New York to situate Arabic language education in the US within the transnational context of conflict and migration. By employing a tr…
Maybe that’s how they learned in the past, but we don’t learn like this today’
Closing questions
Language and (in)securitization
Spurred in part by violent conflict and natural disaster, the surge in global migration calls for renewed attention to the central role of language in everyday (in)securitization. In this brief response, I draw on my work in the Middle East and among Arabic-speaking populations in the United States to offer some illustration of the instantiation of global, macro-processes of (in)securitization and surveillance in the everyday micro-practices of s…
Reconsidering partnerships in education in emergencies
International actors increasingly advocate for partnerships in education in emergencies (EiE) to address the dire educational opportunities of school-aged children in sites of disaster, armed conflict, forced migration, and other humanitarian crises. This study explores the nature of partnerships in EiE. We examine the impetus behind an expansion of partnerships among diverse global actors and key characteristics, relationships, and dynamics with…
Policy networks in refugee education
This paper presents a social network analysis of partnerships in refugee education and shows how relationships between organisations change in response to multiple crises, including political and economic crises, disaster, and COVID-19. We draw insights from an original database of 440 state and nonstate entities engaged in Syria refugee education in Lebanon (2018–2021). We find that partnerships in refugee education comprise a complex web of glo…
White Ignorance in Global Education
In this qualitative research essay, Francine Menashy and Zeena Zakharia advance Charles Mills’s concept of White ignorance for understanding racial power hierarchies in global education governance. They reveal how global education organizations “sanitize racial inequities and silence conversations on race” and how in global education racism has been largely considered a US-based problem, which denies the fact that White supremacy is a global syst…
Crisis Upon Crisis
This study applies a critical political economy approach to understand the tensions, contradictions, and inequities that emerged when COVID-19 altered narratives and practices in education in emergencies, at the global policy level and within the local context of Syria refugee education in Lebanon. Through a vertical case study methodology, our research offers insights into a setting in which global organizations and actors sought to address the …
Partnerships for education in emergencies
From Capacity Building to Mutual Learning
This article offers insights into partnerships that support refugee teachers to adapt and sustain teaching and learning despite multiple compounding obstacles spurred by political and economic crises, disaster, and COVID-19. Drawing from a 3-year study of Syria refugee education in Lebanon (2018–21), I focus on one dimension of partnership that emerged from a dataset comprising 58 interviews and 31 site visits and observations of partnership acti…
Thinking across Research on Migration and Education
Revisiting Inclusion
This article explores the concept of inclusive education in contexts of forced displacement, where refugeehood intersects with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), as well as gender, poverty, and overlapping forms of discrimination. Drawing on extensive engagement with a refugee-led, non-formal educational organization in Lebanon, we revisit inclusion for refugee children with SEND through a bottom-up lens. We consider inclusion wit…
Reimagining education in emergencies
“Beyond Seeking Permission
In 2024, Harvard Educational Review invited scholars to submit articles for a special issue on Education and Palestine. Working with a group of six collaborators led by Zeena Zakharia, a Palestinia
Teaching Palestine
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Education and experiences of immigrants and refugees (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Economic growth (4 works) · Economics (4 works) · Peace and Human Rights Education (4 works) · Peacebuilding and International Security (4 works) · Refugee (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works)