Open: 17:30 - 20:00 hrs
Tickets: € 5
Masterclass: Creative Methodologies for Decolonial Futures
As part of the Decolonial Futures Research Priority Area (RPA) at the University of Amsterdam, fellows Dia Barghouti and Soraya El Kahlaoui invite you to an evening of performances, presentations, and collective discussion at OT301 in Amsterdam on May 31, exploring creative methodologies in colonial contexts through the case of Palestine. Bringing together research, music, film, and performance, the event reflects on how creative practices can become tools for documenting dispossession, imagining resistance, and reclaiming collective histories.
The evening unfolds in two parts: a documentary film screening, followed by performances, research presentations, and an open discussion with the audience.
Part I — Film Screening
16:30 – 17:30 —Landless Moroccans
As part of the evening, prior to the presentations, we will be showing the documentary film Landless Moroccans, written and directed by Soraya El Kahlaoui.
Part II — Performances, Presentations & Conversation
17:30 – 17:50 — Break (transition to the performance/talks)
17:50 – 18:00 — Opening by Khadija El Mourabit
18:00 – 18:30 — Performance by Maya al-Khaldi
18:30 – 18:45 — Presentation by Soraya El Kahlaoui
18:45 – 19:00 — Presentation by Dia Barghouti
19:00 – 20:00 — Conversation with the audience
The evening will open with a live musical performance by Palestinian musician, composer, and researcher Maya al-Khaldi, whose work experiments with Palestinian musical heritage, sound archives, and lost performance traditions to imagine a decolonial future.
Soraya El Kahlaoui, researcher based in Palestine, will present her ongoing work on the narratives of dispossession between Morocco and Palestine through video testimonies and life histories, reflecting on visual storytelling as a method for amplifying marginalized voices and documenting experiences of loss, displacement, and resistance.
Palestinian playwright and researcher Dia Barghouti will then present her work on Palestinian theatre, exploring how experimentation with extinct Palestinian traditions and Sufi rituals can create new opportunities for artistic innovation and resistance to the Israeli occupation.
The event will conclude with an open discussion with the audience, creating space for collective reflection on decolonial knowledge production, artistic practice, and the politics of representation. Moderated by Khadija El Mourabit.
Bio’s
Dia Barghouti
Dia Barghouti is a Palestinian researcher and playwright. She holds a PhD in Drama and Theatre Arts from Goldsmiths, University of London (2021) and is currently a visiting fellow at the European University Institute. Her research explores Sufi performance traditions in Palestine and Tunisia, with a focus on their connections to Islamic philosophy and intellectual history. Her writings have appeared in New Theatre Quarterly, Performance Research, Theatre Research International, Jerusalem Quarterly, Arab Stages, The Markaz Review, among other academic and cultural journals. Her most recent play, Journey to the Third Dimension of a Clementine was published by Dar al-Kitab (2025). The play includes a collaboration with Palestinian musicians Maya al-Khaldi and Tareq Abboushi, who composed and recorded the music featured in the play that will be released in a forthcoming album.
Soraya El Kahlaoui
Soraya El Kahlaoui is a sociologist and researcher at Institut français du Proche-Orient working on land, dispossession, and property conflicts in Palestine and North Africa. Combining ethnography, visual methodologies, archival research, and counter-mapping, her work explores how creative and collaborative methods can document colonial violence and everyday forms of resistance. She is the founder of the mapping initiative Traab and director of the documentary Landless Moroccans.
Khadija El Mourabit
Khadija al Mourabit is a Dutch philosopher, writer, poet, and lecturer of Amazigh-Moroccan descent. She studied philosophy at the University of Amsterdam and worked as a lecturer at Leiden University. Her poetry, written in both Dutch and Tamazight, explores themes of identity, migration, and cultural heritage. Alongside her literary work, she is active in community initiatives that amplify social justice and women’s stories and perspectives, making her a powerful bridge between cultures and generations.
Maya Khaldi
Maya Khaldi is a singer and composer based between Belgium and Palestine. She has collaborated with a few Palestinian poets, musicians, playwrights, and artists, and in March 2022, released her debut album, Other World. Maya is currently a PhD researcher at LUCA School of Art, BE, where her research focuses on Palestinian traditional women’s songs and experimental composition to explore what the sound of future liberation could be.