Ready for the challenge
Concerns about international aid and development have come to the fore with the axing of USAID and further cuts to UK government funding. While criticising the wrecking ball approach, Dr Mezna Qato, the new Director of the Margaret Anstee Centre, agrees on the need to explore fresh ways to meet humanitarian needs and empower people to build better lives.
Within the sector, there have been discussions for years about the efficacy of development funding and aid, and the best way to support developing countries. It was the opportunity to explore these issues and more that attracted Mezna Qato to the role of Director of the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies (MAC). The Newnham-based centre supports research into economic and social development and international relations, in and relating to the Global South.
'Development internationally is being called into question and it's fair for citizens to ask: what does it mean for us to expend resources abroad when our infrastructure is collapsing, our financial condition worsening? People want to understand how aid can support and not, intentionally or unintentionally, do harm. I think in the past people have been hesitant to ask those questions for fear of being seen as rejecting a virtuous act, but they are perfectly legitimate questions.
‘Our institutions have to be spaces where we challenge each other and are challenged by the voices around us, especially those less often heard. And we should hold our ground too when we think we have done the research and have the evidence for our argument. That's what a university should be doing. For us at the MAC, it's a smaller version of that, and with a very particular remit around development and international relations, and the role they can play in building a better future for all.’
The MAC was founded in 2018 thanks to a generous legacy from Dame Margaret Anstee (NC 1944), who read Modern and Medieval Languages. She became the first woman Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, where her long career encompassed economic and social development programmes, disaster relief and peacekeeping missions.
‘She did so many different things, a true Renaissance woman,’ Mezna said. ‘I was looking through her archival documents, her letters and correspondence – with everyone from Angolan officials to anti-militarist campaigners, as well as officials within the UN. She engaged with all sorts of people; she even went head-to-head with warlords, because they were powerful and had the guns, so they had to be at the table to discuss disarmament. She had such a refreshingly practical ethos.’
The Centre, Mezna said, has a clear purpose but is dynamic, with room to transform as different people become involved. She aims for the MAC to be a College- and University-wide space welcoming interdisciplinary development scholarship, starting dialogues with people who are not part of the academic ecosystem, but work in politics and policy, movements and organising. ‘We’re setting up a number of opportunities for students and scholars to be in conversation with those other ecosystems propelling change,’ Mezna said.
‘There are all these different ways Cambridge connects to the world and is an incubator of new ideas: different refugee initiatives emerged here, climate efforts and initiatives like Cambridge Global Challenges (addressing the UN Sustainable Development Goals). I see the MAC as a place at Newnham that can be an incubator of new ideas and new relationships, supporting student and scholarly projects: where they can seek advice and cross-pollinate different ideas into more robust initiatives.’
Palestinian education
Mezna’s research and teaching focuses on histories and theories of social, economic and political transformation amongst refugee and stateless communities, as well as the politics and practice of archives, and global micro-histories of movements. One project focuses on Palestinians after 1948 as they navigated the world and engaged in political movements. She is also completing a book on the history of education for Palestinians.
‘I'm looking at the first generation of young people after the 1948 war, and how education came to be the central vehicle for social, political and economic regeneration,’ she said. ‘In the development world, there's a trope that the Palestinians are the most educated refugees in the world. That was a success but also a story of suppression, and the book looks at the tensions that the refugees grappled with.
‘It was a carrot and a stick. As a refugee in a host country, you were welcome to be educated but not to talk about your political desires. The West Bank was under Jordanian rule between 1948 and 1967, and Jordan aimed to incorporate it into its state. So, the bargain with Palestinians was “you can survive, even flourish, but you will never have self-determination”. It was a Faustian bargain, and I write about the consequence of that bargain for social development and regeneration amongst this new stateless population.’
More immediately, Mezna has become increasingly involved in University, UK and international initiatives and discussions on education and reconstruction in Gaza. ‘It might seem removed from the immediate crisis at hand, but in fact, it is Palestinians in Gaza who have spurred on these discussions in the hope of not making the same mistakes made after the 1948 war. I'm involved in supporting Palestinian universities in Gaza, thinking alongside their leaderships and building on the priorities set by those universities for the international development community and other institutions, including Cambridge.’
Wide-ranging brief
Mezna said the wide brief of the MAC allows the Centre to remain nimble and responsive to advancements in scholarship and policies on development, nationally and internationally. Already, in her first year, the 2024–25 programme saw the introduction of three new programming components: masterclasses with development practitioners, training programmes for students and early career development scholars, and a postgraduate seminar series. The first masterclass was with Bonnie Leask, an indigenous campaigner and government official, who spoke about her life, educational and professional experience in the overlapping governance systems on her traditional lands in Canada.
Ongoing projects include the ‘Archives of the Disappeared’ Programme at the MAC, now in its sixth year. Working with Newnham colleagues Professor Yael Navaro and Dr Chana Morgenstern, and Cambridge alumna Dr Mahvish Ahmad, Assistant Professor in Human Rights and Politics at the LSE, the programme addresses the destruction and disappearance of life-worlds, and the many attempts to document them, particularly in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. The work has involved historians and anthropologists, but artists too, thinking about art as a mechanism to ask these questions in a way that is of a different register. Mezna’s collaborative artwork with A Future Collective was part of the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale, and has been acquired by the Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum, the British Library and others.
She joined Newnham as a historian and Fellow after a BA from the University of Chicago, a doctorate from the University of Oxford, and a spell as Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow at the Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia University. History has been the abiding lens through which she sees the world. ‘Through my teaching, my research, my archival work, public historical and artistic work, I hope to convey the urgency of history-writing; of history as a reminder that things never stay the same and, in thinking historically, they can make change too.’
The Margaret Anstee Centre (MAC) team
Agnes Hoctor works as the MAC Knowledge Exchange Co-ordinator, organising events and training, and supporting the research team to collaborate and engage with external stakeholders. She arranged media training for MAC researchers, including a session on developing their social media profiles; ran Introduction to Knowledge Exchange training, looking at policy engagement, public engagement and commercialisation for researchers; and supported one researcher to run a webinar series on policy and development in the Global South. Agnes said, ‘The College has a strong track record of producing excellent female scholars who have changed the world. Our researchers are so passionate about their work and the prospect of seeing how that work will benefit society for years to come is exciting.’
The MAC hosts three Research Fellows. Cynthia Kamwengo's work is centred on the geopolitics of shaping a national identity and policy planning in Africa. Diala Lteif explores the role of subaltern populations in the production of space and cities, with a focus on the Middle East. My Hang Thi Bui examines South Korea–Vietnam transnational migration and city diplomacy, focusing on inter-Asian flows of labour, capital and development.
The Centre also supports three PhD students and has hosted visiting scholars including Fadia Panosetti, Postdoctoral Affiliate at Newnham, and Rashalee Mitchell, a Visiting Bye-Fellow from the University of the West Indies.
This feature first appeared in the Roll Letter 2024-25, published January 2026. Photo of West Bank, Palestine by Fadia Panosetti