Lisa Bhungalia

Lisa Bhungalia is an Associate Professor of Geography and International Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and core faculty in the Middle East Studies Program. Their research focuses on late-modern war, law, empire, and transnational linkages between the US and Southwest Asian and North African region. Their first book, Elastic Empire: Refashioning War through Aid in Palestine (Stanford University Press 2024), examines the deepening entanglements of aid, law, and war in Palestine with attention to the surveillance and policing regimes produced through the embedding of counterterrorism laws and infrastructures into civilian aid flows. They are also developing new research on the social lives of terrorism databases. Their research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, National Science Foundation, and Palestinian American Research Center, among other bodies, and their published work has appeared in Politics and Space, Political Geography, Geopolitics, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Society and Space, Environment and Planning A, Middle East Report, and Jadaliyya, among other venues.

A link to their faculty profile can be found here.

Courses Taught

Political Geographies of Empire Seminar

Global Middle East

Global In/security

Introduction to International Studies

Affiliations

Middle East Studies Program