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- Country of residence: Palestine
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Elias Zreik, a prominent sociologist and researcher, is considered one of the leading intellectuals and academics in the Arab world. He is also one of the most important figures in Arab and Palestinian sociology. He was born in 1939 in the city of Acre and studied at Simon Fraser University in Canada, where he earned his master's degree. He continued his studies and obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Essex in Britain.
Zreik's studies over the decades have focused on the history of Zionist colonization in Palestine, the sociology of colonial settler communities, and surveillance patterns.
He previously worked as a professor at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies and as a visiting researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha. He also held the position of sociology professor at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, until his passing.
He represented the Palestinian side in the refugee group during the multilateral negotiations after the Madrid Conference. After 1996, Zreik returned to Palestine after a long absence and maintained continuous contact with the Palestinian Institute for Studies, contributing to its intellectual production through his published books and the institute's journals. In 2005, he was the first to occupy the UNESCO Chair in Applied Research.
In 2008, Zreik received the Palestine Award for his contribution to the field of sociology and received the award from the late President Yasser Arafat.
He has numerous studies in sociology, control, and surveillance, as well as the sociology of science. His latest contribution was the study "The Rise and Decline of the Arab-Islamic World" (Additions 2022).
Some of his most important works include:
Palestinians in Israel: A Study in Internal Colonialism (1979).
The Sociology of Palestinians (1980).
Surveillance, Monitoring, and Globalization (2010).
Surveillance, Colonialism, and Privacy (1996).
Demography and Transfer: Israel's Road to the Unknown (2003).
Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Study of the Palestinian Society (2003).
Despite leaving Palestine more than 50 years ago, he remained engaged with it from a research perspective and continued to visit throughout these years, delivering dozens of lectures.
After decades of rich contributions to social research, Elias Zreik passed away on January 17, 2023, at the age of 84, leaving his scholarly legacy in the fields of colonial studies and sociology.
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