The aftermath of the October 7, 2023 attacks marks one of the most devastating periods in Gaza’s history. The ongoing war has created an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, with mass civilian casualties, the displacement of over 90% of the population, and the near-collapse of essential infrastructure—including electricity, water, healthcare, food systems and education. In this context, community-led networks and Gaza-based civil society organizations emerged as the primary providers of humanitarian assistance. Their adaptive strategies—decentralized decision-making, flexible resource distribution, and locally grounded accountability—represent a vital yet under-documented form of subaltern governance. 

At the same time, Gaza’s universities, despite the destruction of more than 80% of their infrastructure and the loss of hundreds of staff members, have continued to operate as active centres of education, social cohesion, and recovery-oriented knowledge. They remain crucial anchors in Palestinian society, demonstrating that institutional resilience is as important as community-level survival.  

Against the backdrop of severe access restrictions and the Israeli-imposed blockade, external engagement with Gaza has been uneven. Some actors, including Qatar, have nonetheless maintained channels of support to Gaza’s higher education sector and local organizations. Examining this engagement provides an entry point to understand how external humanitarian and academic actors interact with, recognize, or bypass community-led governance and resilient local institutions under conditions of institutional collapse.  

Building on its work supporting higher education in conflict and post-conflict settings, and recognizing the often overlooked role of universities in peacebuilding, swisspeace, in partnership with the PhD Programme in Governance and Crisis Management at the Islamic University of Gaza (IUG), will examine how humanitarian governance is enacted when formal systems collapse, how universities document and transmit locally generated knowledge, and how external actors engage with these emergent and subaltern governance mechanisms. Through fieldwork, interviews, and participatory observation, the project’s findings will be integrated into the IUG’s curricula and foster evidence-based dialogue with Swiss and regional stakeholders, positioning Palestinian universities as central knowledge hubs driving recovery and resilience.

Water availability in the West Bank is far below global benchmarks for scarcity (Ref3), with accessible resources estimated at only 185 m³ per capita per year in 2015 and projected to decline below 83 m³ per capita per year by 2050 (Ref2). This shortage is shaped by natural conditions, including arid climate and variable rainfall, as well as political constraints: approximately 87 % of groundwater reserves remain under Israeli control and largely inaccessible to Palestinians (Ref1, Ref4). As a result, many households, schools, and institutions rely on informal water sources such as boreholes, private wells, and water trucking. While these sources are essential for community resilience and self-supply, they are rarely monitored and may carry microbial and chemical health risks, particularly for children.

The project aims to improve the safety and reliability of unregulated water sources in Hebron Municipality while strengthening community resilience. Specific objectives are: (1) characterize sources, storage, and delivery and assess microbial and chemical risks through sampling and testing; (2) engage communities, water truck operators, schools, and municipal stakeholders through participatory workshops and meetings; and (3) develop and pilot booster chlorination protocols and source protection measures under real-world conditions, evaluating operational performance; and (4) produce operational guidelines.

The project is structured into five work packages: identification and characterization of unregulated sources; exposure pathways and source-level water quality assessment; development of booster chlorination and source protection measures; pilot implementation and evaluation; and stakeholder engagement and dissemination. Activities include field surveys, interviews, laboratory analysis, participatory workshops, and real-world testing.

Expected outputs include characterization and risk assessment reports, community and stakeholder workshop(s), pilot evaluation reports and operational guidelines. These will reduce health risks, foster community ownership of water safety practices, and contribute to resilient water management.

The project builds on long-term collaboration between FHNW and PPU, including prior work on school water chlorination and the ongoing 2024–2025 greywater recycling project, strengthening local trust, field access, and practical experience. Engagement with communities, municipalities, and WASH actors ensures relevance and sustainability.

Since October 2023, military operations and settlement expansion in the West Bank have intensified, with Hebron among the most affected cities. Dense networks of checkpoints, barriers, and settlements fragment neighborhoods, restrict mobility, and expose residents to repeated and often involuntary encounters with armed soldiers and settlers. While the psychological consequences of direct physical violence are well documented, far less is known about how the built environment of military occupation shapes everyday well-being through chronic, structural forms of harm.

This project examines how proximity to occupation infrastructure - particularly checkpoints, barriers, and settlements - affects psychological well-being among Palestinians living in Hebron. Building on emerging evidence and Palestinian scholarship on structural violence, it tests whether negative intergroup contact constitutes a key mechanism linking these physical structures to psychological harm. Whereas classic intergroup contact research has emphasized the benefits of contact under conditions of equality, encounters in Hebron often occur under extreme power asymmetries and may involve surveillance, coercion, humiliation, and anticipatory stress, making them a distinct and cumulative source of psychological strain.

Hebron provides a uniquely informative setting for this analysis. Its division into the H1 and H2 areas generates substantial variation in exposure to occupation infrastructure, enabling fine-grained comparisons across neighborhoods and everyday mobility routes. Using a mixed-methods design, the project combines qualitative interviews with Palestinian residents and community stakeholders, a representative survey, and geo-spatial data on occupation infrastructure. This integrated approach captures both lived experiences of the local community and population-level patterns, while allowing rigorous measurement of individual exposure to structural constraints.

By conceptualizing occupation infrastructure as a chronic driver of psychological harm and identifying negative intergroup contact as an empirically testable pathway, the project advances research on structural violence, intergroup relations, and mental health in conflict settings. The findings will be relevant to interdisciplinary scholarship, local stakeholders, human rights advocacy, and policy debates on the long-term psychological consequences of conflict infrastructure.

This proposal builds on our previous research and community engagement in Tulkarm since 2018 funded by the MENA Leading House. Findings from earlier phases show that the implementation of international standards protecting vulnerable groups in Tulkarem remains weak (Dormeier et al. 2024; Saleh 2022; Garcia Delahaye et al. 2021). Drawing on Johan Galtung’s concept of structural violence (1969), our findings highlight the diversity of violence patterns across the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the largely informal, locally specific responses developed by social actors to address them.

Since our last fieldwork 2022, the scale, intensity, and continuity of military attacks and forced displacement over the past year have fundamentally transformed the social realities of Tulkarm’s communities. Necessitating a renewed and deeper engagement. Partners from both academia and civil society, whom we engaged with during earlier phases, have strongly encouraged us to update and deepen our analysis in light of the current unrest, particularly regarding the capacity of social mechanisms to mitigate violence.

This research proposal represents a critical next phase following our initial study on the multifaceted nature of violence and community-based interventions, responding to recent upheavals by moving beyond traditional research models. Adopting a robust Participatory Action Research framework, the project will directly collaborate with social workers through a training workshop that empowers them to co-design the research, collect data within their communities-particularly among women, children, and adolescents- and collectively analyse the findings. By centring social workers as co-researchers and frontline knowledge producers, this approach ensures that lived experiences and localized responses to violence and displacement are integral to understanding the crisis and developing contextually grounded strategies for interventions. Our main research question will address how are changing forms of violence in Tulkarm experienced, interpreted, and addressed by frontline social specialists and the communities they work with.

The core objective of this research project is to collaboratively document, analyse, and understand the changing landscapes of violence in Tulkarm and the adaptive response mechanisms developed and needed by the community, with a specific focus on the perspectives of frontline social specialists and in order to strengthen their capacities.

The Lebanon Initiative for Education (LIFE) Phase 1 Evaluation Study strengthens the pedagogical and socio-emotional competences of teachers working with vulnerable learners in Lebanon’s protracted crisis. Faced with economic collapse, political instability, and the world’s highest refugee density, teachers support diverse groups of children experiencing poverty, displacement, and psychosocial stress, while professional development opportunities have largely eroded.

The LIFE Phase 1 Evaluation Study develops, pilots, and institutionalizes an evidence-based program that enhances teacher resilience and their ability to foster students’ socio-emotional learning. Grounded in national and international SEL frameworks, the project shifts the focus from students alone to teachers’ wellbeing and capacities as key drivers of learning.

Implemented by the Zurich University of Teacher Education with Lebanese partners, the LIFE Phase 1 Evaluation Study (2026–2027) includes a needs analysis, co-design of modular training and mentoring, and a mixed-method baseline study in five pilot schools. A pilot implementation and continuous research guide refinement will prepare for scaling up the program. Outputs include adapted training materials, an open digital platform, and a strategy for national expansion in Phase 2.

Communities in Palestine face daily energy disruptions that threaten hospitals, water systems, schools, shelters, and communication networks. Frequent outages, unstable voltage, and poor power quality make it difficult to sustain essential services, especially during crises when reliable electricity is most needed. These challenges highlight the urgent need for decentralized solutions that can operate independently of the fragile national grid.

This project brings together Empa’s Urban Energy Systems Laboratory (UESL) in Switzerland and Palestine Polytechnic University (PPU) to co‑design resilient microgrid solutions that keep critical facilities running when the grid fails. UESL contributes advanced expertise in energy system modeling, scenario analysis, and optimization. PPU provides strong local knowledge, technical capacity, and direct access to field data through partnerships with utilities such as Hebron Electric Power Company (HEPCo). This collaboration ensures that solutions are both scientifically rigorous and grounded in the realities of Palestine’s energy system.

The project will deliver microgrid prototypes powered by solar energy and storage, tailored to crisis conditions. These systems will be designed to sustain hospitals, water pumping stations, and municipal services, reducing vulnerability and safeguarding community wellbeing. By integrating advanced modeling with field diagnostics, the partners will optimize microgrids for reliability, cost‑effectiveness, and resilience.

Capacity building is central. Local engineers, students, and stakeholders will be involved through training sessions, workshops, and joint knowledge exchange activities. This ensures expertise transfer, strengthens local ownership, and supports replication in other fragile regions.

Beyond technical innovation, the initiative builds long‑term collaboration between Swiss and Palestinian institutions, enhances trust with local communities, and provides a blueprint for scaling resilience strategies. It directly supports the 2025 call on “Research in Crisis‑Affected Contexts: Continuity, Participation, and Reconstruction” by offering solutions that safeguard essential services and lay foundations for sustainable recovery

This Swiss–Lebanese project establishes the first Youth-Led Policy Labs in Lebanon—a 12-month initiative that places university students aged 18–25 at the center of evidence-based policymaking in a country facing prolonged economic, political, and social crisis. Jointly implemented by Prof. Leila Dagher (Lebanese American University) and Prof. Aya Kachi (University of Basel), the project combines original empirical research with hands-on policy training in a real-world reconstruction context in the Beirut region.

The project addresses two urgent policy challenges facing Lebanon today: (1) how to integrate youth and affected communities into post-crisis reconstruction policymaking, particularly in Greater Beirut, and (2) how to prevent the continued loss (“brain drain”) of highly educated young people during prolonged compound crises. Through original surveys and focus groups conducted by participating students, the Policy Labs generate empirical evidence on inclusive reconstruction processes and youth brain retention, while building local capacity by training students in evidence-based policymaking through applied research.

Students work in two parallel Policy Labs under close academic supervision, leading all substantive research steps—from refining research questions and collecting data to analyzing findings and formulating policy recommendations. Training integrates qualitative and quantitative methods, ethical and trauma-sensitive fieldwork, and policy communication, ensuring that capacity building and knowledge production reinforce each other.

The project produces concrete, policy-relevant outputs, including two professional bilingual (Arabic–English) policy briefs co-authored by students and faculty, a fully anonymized and publicly accessible dataset deposited in open repositories, an open-access Youth-Led Policy Lab Toolkit (curriculum, instruments, ethical guidelines, and facilitation manuals) jointly published by the Lebanese and Swiss partners and designed for replication across crisis-affected MENA countries, and a high-level closing policy dialogue in Beirut with key public, international, and private-sector stakeholders.

Anchored at LAU’s Center for Policy Action, the project contributes to Lebanon’s reconstruction while offering a scalable model for inclusive, evidence-driven policymaking in fragile and post-conflict contexts.

Women In Transitional Justice: Narratives, Empowerment and Solidarity in Syria (WITNESS)

The WITNESS project aims to document how lived experiences of enforced disappearances in post-Assad Syria inform women’s current formulation of normative claims regarding TJ and expectations toward state and non-state actors. It makes strategic use of participatory research to ensure that local voices are included in knowledge production on TJ. It leverages participatory research to foster dialogue, capacity building and knowledge transfer, empowering research participants (i.e. female relatives of the disappeared) to engage in policy discussions on TJ with national and international stakeholders, based on their lived experiences. 

WITNESS builds on SUPPSAL, an integrated, transdisciplinary research and social-impact initiative that addresses a critical gap in knowledge and practice regarding the mental health and psychosocial consequences of intersecting experiences of enforced disappearance and protracted forced displacement among forcibly displaced Syrian women. SUPPSAL combines academic research, applied research, and the design and implementation of MHPSS interventions to inform culturally and gender-responsive services that remain largely unavailable or inaccessible to affected women across host environments.

The project is implemented in a collaboration between swisspeace, the American University of Beirut (AUB), and the feminist civil society organisation “Women Now for Development”, bringing together expertise in political science, peace and conflict studies, global health, and feminist research. SUPPSAL is built on participatory research, positioning affected women not merely as research subjects but as active contributors to knowledge production, analysis, and intervention design across multiple contexts.