From Palestine to Scotland: Celebrating the Raja Shehadeh Archive
Thu 03 Sept
|Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam i
You are invited to a special event with the acclaimed author Raja Shehadeh, taking place in the UK and which will be streamed online around the world.
Time & Location
03 Sept 2026, 15:00 – 16:00
Alwaleed Centre for the Study of Islam i, 16 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK
About the event
“We are very proud. For the past two years, the team at the Educational Bookshop has been working in collaboration with the Universities of Edinburgh and Exeter to help Raja Shehadeh safeguard the diaries he has kept daily since his teenage years — literally millions of words documenting six decades of his life, starting even before 1967. Our friend and fellow author Matthew Teller has played a significant role managing this process, for which we are deeply grateful.
Raja’s archive comprises tens of thousands of original documents, including legal and political records kept by his father, the lawyer Aziz Shehadeh (1912–1985). In Ramallah, it was under increasing threat from the Israeli army and militarised settlers. Raja decided to relocate his archive to the UK. The team first had to digitise everything, then physically move the papers out of the country professionally yet quietly. Last month, this process was completed successfully.