Internationalisation Days 2026

Room Seminari, U6 Agorà Building, 4° floor

9.30 a.m. - 11.30 a.m. || Keynote session

• Dr. Abeer Otman, PhD, Postdoctoral Fellow, Università di Milano-Bicocca - From Gaza to the World: A Counter Strike Against Genocide
  “بدنا نوصل صوتنا للعالم”

• Dr. Mohamed Abu Shawish, PhD, Trauma Therapy Institute- Gaza - The digital presence as an act of memory and psychosocial healing: a case study of social media use in the Gaza strip post-October 7, 2023

• Chair
  Prof. Guido Veronese, PhD, Università di Milano-Bicocca

• Discussant
  Prof. Mauro Van Aken, PhD, Università di Milano-Bicocca

14.30 p.m. - 16.30 p.m.  || Research funding programmes: operational overviews and experiences

  Workshop by the Grant Office

• Dr. Federica Fumagalli e Dr. Giulia Dallari, Direzione Generale Centro Servizi di Scienze della Formazione, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

  Understanding the FIS Program and the Starting Grant Scheme: an open discussion.

• Dr. Davide Cino, PhD, Researcher, Università di Milano-Bicocca

Room Polivalente, U6 Agorà Building, 4° floor

11.00 a.m. - 13.00 p.m. (room Polivalente, U6 Agorà Building, IV piano)

• Award ceremony of the “Internationalization Days”
• Poster presentation of the 2025 Edition winners

Refreshments

Dr. Abeer Otman (PhD) is a Palestinian mother, social worker, and researcher. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milano–Bicocca, where her work examines father–child relationalities in Gaza under conditions of genocide. Her doctoral research examined Fatherhood in the Settler Colonial Context: The Case of Occupied East Jerusalem.
In addition, her broader research explores Palestinian students’ experiences of livability, survivability, refusal, and futurity within settler colonial higher education systems.

From Gaza to the World: A Counter Strike Against Genocide
“بدنا نوصل صوتنا للعالم”

This presentation examines the methodological and decolonial implications of researching a genocide as it is being live-streamed by its survivors. The extensive circulation of videos and photographs produced by Gazans during Israel’s genocidal war raises urgent questions about why they insist on sharing their own traumatization and resistance. What forms of interaction and relationality they seek from viewers, and how they interpret local and global engagements with their testimonies. These digital archives—created in real time and under conditions of annihilation—compel indigenous and anti-colonial scholars to think about how we read, receive, and ethically respond to the Gaza genocide as it unfolds before us.
Drawing on debates in the philosophy of knowledge and decolonial media studies, the presentation interrogates the status of digital testimony as both data and epistemology. While scholars advocating the decolonization of digital media highlight how online platforms can enable indigenous worldmaking, language, and epistemic autonomy, others question the scientific reliability of such material, leading some academic journals to dismiss research grounded primarily in digital documentation of the genocide. I argue that, in a context where Gazans’ experiences are mediated through the very technologies they use to assert presence, rejecting digital testimony constitutes epistemic violence.
Focusing on Gaza’s live-streamed genocide as a life-and-death methodological terrain, the presentation contends that digital testimonies are not ancillary sources but indispensable archives of Indigenous witnessing. In a historical moment when struggles extend across media, social media, and academic arenas, colonized populations must confront and reshape the epistemic structures that govern their visibility. Methodological engagement with these digital archives is therefore not only justified but necessary; it constitutes a decolonial practice through which the oppressed assert their authority to narrate, document, and theorize their own survival and liberation.

Dr. Abeer Otman (PhD) is a Palestinian mother, social worker, and researcher. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Milano–Bicocca, where her work examines father–child relationalities in Gaza under conditions of genocide. Her doctoral research examined Fatherhood in the Settler Colonial Context: The Case of Occupied East Jerusalem.
In addition, her broader research explores Palestinian students’ experiences of livability, survivability, refusal, and futurity within settler colonial higher education systems.

From Gaza to the World: A Counter Strike Against Genocide
“بدنا نوصل صوتنا للعالم”

This presentation examines the methodological and decolonial implications of researching a genocide as it is being live-streamed by its survivors. The extensive circulation of videos and photographs produced by Gazans during Israel’s genocidal war raises urgent questions about why they insist on sharing their own traumatization and resistance. What forms of interaction and relationality they seek from viewers, and how they interpret local and global engagements with their testimonies. These digital archives—created in real time and under conditions of annihilation—compel indigenous and anti-colonial scholars to think about how we read, receive, and ethically respond to the Gaza genocide as it unfolds before us.
Drawing on debates in the philosophy of knowledge and decolonial media studies, the presentation interrogates the status of digital testimony as both data and epistemology. While scholars advocating the decolonization of digital media highlight how online platforms can enable indigenous worldmaking, language, and epistemic autonomy, others question the scientific reliability of such material, leading some academic journals to dismiss research grounded primarily in digital documentation of the genocide. I argue that, in a context where Gazans’ experiences are mediated through the very technologies they use to assert presence, rejecting digital testimony constitutes epistemic violence.
Focusing on Gaza’s live-streamed genocide as a life-and-death methodological terrain, the presentation contends that digital testimonies are not ancillary sources but indispensable archives of Indigenous witnessing. In a historical moment when struggles extend across media, social media, and academic arenas, colonized populations must confront and reshape the epistemic structures that govern their visibility. Methodological engagement with these digital archives is therefore not only justified but necessary; it constitutes a decolonial practice through which the oppressed assert their authority to narrate, document, and theorize their own survival and liberation.