BOOK PRESENTATION - Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare
hosted by Professor
Sanam Vakil
Julie Norman
Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations, University College London (UCL); Director of UCL’s Israel-Palestine Initiative
Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare
In this urgent and compelling book, Julie M. Norman and Maia Carter Hallward tell the story of Gaza from its early foundations, across decades of occupation, to the horrors of October 7 and the devastation of the subsequent war. Rather than focusing on elites or abstract politics, at the book's heart are ordinary Gazans - students, aid workers, journalists, and teachers - whose first-hand testimonies vividly illuminate the realities behind the headlines.
Refusing to sensationalize or oversimplify, the book reckons with the legal, moral, and humanitarian debates surrounding Gaza, from war crimes investigations to the contested meaning of resistance and the politicization of aid. Combining a nuanced narrative with hard-hitting reflections from everyday Gazans, the book serves as a timely and necessary disruption of media cliches and political binaries, from the perspectives of Gaza's own people.
JULIE NORMANJulie Norman is an Associate Professor (Teaching) in Politics and International Relations at University College London (UCL), with a focus on conflict, political violence, and the Middle East. She is also the Coordinator of UCL's Israel-Palestine Initiative (IPI), and she is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House.
Norman is the author of multiple books on conflict and divided societies, including
Gaza: The Dream and the Nightmare (Polity 2025), and
Understanding Nonviolence (Polity 2015), and she has published multiple articles in academic journals including
Perspectives on Politics, Political Psychology, Security Dialogue, Journal of Global Security Studies, Journal of Peacebuilding & Development, PS: Politics & Political Science, and others.
Norman's academic research and teaching is complemented by work in policy and practice. She has worked with NGOs in Israel-Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq, and she was the lead researcher on a multi-year project on "Conflict Sensitivity and Community Resilience in Conflict Zones" with the international NGO Christian Aid, with fieldwork in South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, and Myanmar. She has provided expert analysis to the UK's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the UK's Ministry of Defence (MoD), the US State Department, the US Institute of Peace (USIP), and other national and international agencies.
She is a frequent commentator on the BBC, CNN, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, and other networks, and her insights have been featured in the
Washington Post, The Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, The Hill, Newsweek, The Conversation, Associated Press, and other public-facing outlets.
She holds a PhD in International Relations from American University in Washington, DC, with concentrations in Human Rights and Conflict Resolution, and a BA from Duke University. She was previously a Lecturer in Politics at McGill University and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and she has held fellowships at the University of Notre Dame, Queen's University Belfast (QUB), MIT, and Dartmouth College.
