Biography
My research focuses on women’s entrepreneurship in Occupied Palestine, examining how family relationships, occupation, and the broader institutional environment shape women’s entrepreneurial experiences and agency. My PhD research, titled "Navigating the Family Support Paradox: Relational Agency and Sumud among Women Entrepreneurs in Occupied Palestine," investigates how the family functions simultaneously as a source of essential support and a structure that can reproduce gendered expectations and constraints. Drawing on Institutional Theory and Relational Autonomy Theory, the study explores how Palestinian women entrepreneurs navigate these tensions and exercise relational agency, with particular attention to Sumud (steadfastness) as a practice of everyday resistance, survival, and negotiation. Methodologically, the research adopts an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, combining survey data from 500 women entrepreneurs with qualitative, in-depth interviews. My broader research interests include gender and development, women’s economic empowerment, institutional dynamics, informal institutions, relational agency, and entrepreneurship in conflict-affected and politically constrained contexts.
