Mona Jebril

Dr. Mona Jebril is the British Academy Global Innovation Fellow in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a senior research fellow at the Centre for Business Research, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

Her research focuses on Palestine/Israel, particularly the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, as well as other conflict-affected regions in the Middle East. An interdisciplinary scholar, her work spans sociology, higher education, the political economy of health, labor market governance, and development under conditions of conflict and occupation.

Before pursuing her academic research career, Mona lived in the Gaza Strip for more than twenty-two years, where she worked as a public-school teacher and trainer of novice teachers before spending five years as a lecturer at two universities. These experiences continue to shape her research and engagement with questions of conflict, governance, development, and social justice.

Mona holds a PhD in education from the University of Cambridge, where she was a Gates Cambridge Scholar, and an MSc in higher education from the University of Oxford, where she was a Said Foundation Scholar. She earned her BA in English language and literature from Al-Azhar University of Gaza. Following the completion of her PhD, she held several postdoctoral research positions at the University of Cambridge.

Her work has been featured widely across academic, policy, and media platforms. She has been interviewed, quoted, or featured by organizations including the BBC, Reuters, ABC, IPS, Zeteo, University World News, Times Higher Education, Al-Fanar Media, The New Arab, and the University of Cambridge. She has also contributed to academic and media podcasts.

Prior to completing her PhD, Mona worked on a project examining Syrian higher education pre- and post-2011. Her doctoral research explored higher education in Gaza through the experiences of academic staff and students, focusing on de-development and the aftermath of the Arab Spring. As a postdoctoral researcher at Cambridge Judge Business School, she examined the political economy of health in Gaza. More recently, she has been conducting research on labor market governance in Gaza and the West Bank, examining how it is shaped by global, regional, and local dynamics. Her writing has addressed higher education reconstruction, UNRWA, health resilience, and the ethical challenges of rebuilding Gaza’s vital sectors. Most recently, she developed a 3D+ model for research and policymaking in fragmented, decentralized, cross-regional, and multilevel contexts.

Mona is the recipient of the Gates Cambridge 25th Anniversary Impact Prize. She has published in academic, policy, and media outlets and is committed to making her research accessible to wider audiences. Her work has been disseminated through a range of creative formats, including theatrical play, poetry, animation, film, research GIFs, photography, game, comic script, and podcast. She is the host of A Life Lived in Conflict (ALLIC) Podcast.