Iman Aoun

Iman Aoun is an award-winning Palestinian theatre artist, who began her professional career with El-Hakawati Theatre Company in 1984. She co-founded, ASHTAR for Theatre Productions and Training in 1991, and became its artistic director until 2021, when she became the executive director of ASHTAR Theatre.

Halima Aziz

Halima Aziz (born 1999 in Germany) is a Palestinian visual artist and designer whose
practice is shaped by memory, heritage and lived experience. She holds an academic degree
in Design from Düsseldorf and spent part of her childhood in Palestine, an experience that
profoundly influenced her artistic sensitivity and continues to inform her work. Living
between cultures, her artistic language grows from the quiet tension between closeness and
distance, presence and absence. Drawn to painting from an early age, Halima began her
professional artistic journey in 2018. She works primarily with acrylic and oil on canvas and
later expanded her practice to include digital illustration and mixed media. Her exhibitions
include the Palestine Museum US in 2020, the P21 Gallery in London in 2021 and her third
solo exhibition in Münster in 2022. Further presentations followed in Wuppertal, Berlin and
Cologne, as well as at the Museum for the Palestinian People in Washington DC in 2024 and
in Copenhagen later that year. In October 2025, her artworks were exhibited in Mainz, where
they were also donated as part of a charitable initiative. In December 2025, she presented her
work in collaboration with the student departments of the University of Cologne. She is the
artist behind the official artwork for the World Day of Prayer 2024 and has collaborated with
organizations such as Amnesty UK, creating an artwork for International Women’s Day 2025
that emphasized the power of artistic expression and the importance of representation across
cultures, identities and lived realities.

Konrad Suder Chatterjee

Konrad Suder Chatterjee is a writer, actor, director, educator, and social scientist whose work explores the role of art in preventing and healing the impacts of armed conflict. He is Communications Manager at ASHTAR Theatre. An Artist in Residence at the Development Department of SOAS, University of London, he combines research with theatre, creative writing, and podcasting to examine themes of peace, resilience, and social justice. He is the founder of ArtNoHurt, an interdisciplinary platform dedicated to the transformative potential of the arts in conflict and post-conflict settings.

Maryah Converse

Maryah Converse was a Peace Corps educator in Jordan, 2004–2006, was studying in Cairo during the 2011 Arab Spring, and was a Fulbright-Hays researcher in Jordan in 2025. Her publications include New Madrid Journal, Silk Road Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Shooter Literary Magazine. Maryah holds a Masters in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and is a PhD candidate in Arabic linguistics.
bymaryah.com | Twitter: @MaryahRC

David Letwin

David Letwin is a co-founder of Jews for Palestinian Right of Return.

Tommy Mulvoy

Tommy Mulvoy is an American expat living in Switzerland, with his wife and son. He spent 18 years teaching in the United States, Jordan, and Switzerland before stepping away from the classroom in 2022 to become a stay-at-home dad. He earned an MA in English from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English in 2019 and also holds a degree in Special Education and Social Studies from Manhattanville College. His published work, which focuses on parenting, mental health, and sports, can be found at tommymulvoy.com. 

Nick Natrella

Nick is a writer based in Donostia-San Sebastián. His writing focuses on the everyday but with an eye always searching back to the historical, cultural, and political undercurrents of day-to-day life. His work has appeared in Degrowth Journal, Rethinking Economics, Resilience.org, Disrupt Development, and elsewhere. He tries to write regularly on his Substack.

Emile Saba

Emile Saba is Artistic Director of Ashtar Theatre. From his early training in Ramallah to earning an MFA in stage performance in the U.S., Emile has built a career at the intersection of art, activism, and community healing. Under his leadership, Ashtar continues its pioneering work in Theatre of the Oppressed while launching bold new initiatives like a theatre–circus academy.

Al Sweeney

Al Sweeney is an Irish poet and novelist.

N. S. Thompson

N. S. Thompson is a poet, critic and translator. He has worked as a gardener and museum curator in Italy and an academic and creative writing tutor in Oxford. His latest collections are After War (New Walk Editions) and Ghost Hands (Melos Press), both 2020.

Jaime Velasquez

Jaime Velásquez (Colombia) es magíster en Investigación Psicoanalítica y traductor professional inglés/francés-español, miembro de ACTTI-FIT (Asociación Colombiana de Traductores, Terminólogos e Intérpretes – Federación Internacional de Traductores), cuenta con siete libros traducidos publicados y es colaborador habitual, como traductor o editor, de Cadenza Academic Translations (Reino Unido). Actualmente dirige el seminario Una lectura del Quijote en Logos Psicoanalítico de Medellín (Colombia). Correo electrónico: [email protected].