Besan Jaber is an editor, writer, and scholar specializing in gender, transnational feminisms, and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA/SWANA). She is a PhD student in Sociocultural Anthropology and a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois Chicago. Her doctoral research examines solidarity as a feminist praxis, focusing on how feminist movements in the SWANA region imagine, enact, and negotiate solidarity across transnational contexts. She currently serves as a guest editor for Gatherings' issue on "Palestine and Campus Movements: Sites of Transnational Feminist Solidarities," forthcoming in Spring 2026.
Besan brings over a decade of experience working at the intersections of feminist research, international development, journalism, and education. Her publications include Ethnographic Journalism in Arab Media (Al Jazeera Media Institute, 2020), Feminist Placemaking in the Ruptures of the North American Academy (Gatherings, 2024), and Health among Sexual and Gender Minority People Affected by Armed Conflict and Forced Displacement (Social Science & Medicine, 2026). She holds two master's degrees: one in English Literature and Criticism from Yarmouk University and another in Middle Eastern Studies from Georgetown University. She is currently based in Chicago, Illinois.
