From Palestine to Scotland: Celebrating the Raja Shehadeh Archive

Join internationally acclaimed Palestinian writer, lawyer and activist Raja Shehadeh as he marks the accession of his extraordinary personal archive to the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Research Collections.

In this special event, Raja will read from his diaries which form the majority of the archive, discussing their significance for literature, history and the study of Palestine alongside members of the team who helped preserve, digitise and transport the archive safely to Scotland.

This event will be hybrid with attendance possible both online and in-person. The event will be followed by a reception.

About the Raja Shehadeh Archive

Beginning in May 1967, at the age of just 15, Raja Shehadeh began recording his thoughts, observations and experiences in diaries that he continues to write six decades on. Written largely in English, these remarkable journals now comprise more than five million words across tens of thousands of pages, offering an unparalleled record of Palestinian life, politics and society through the eyes of one of its most celebrated writers.

Working with specialists from the Digital Archive of the Middle East at the University of Exeter, colleagues at Jerusalem's Educational Bookshop carefully digitised every page of Raja's diaries, together with the papers of his late father, Aziz Shehadeh, before transporting the whole archive to Edinburgh, where it is now preserved at the University's Centre for Research Collections.

Registration

This event is free to attend but registration is essential for both online and in-person attendance. Click the link below to register.

Register here.

If you would like to attend in-person, we recommend registering as soon as possible as capacity is very limited.