Rochelle Anne Davis

Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Georgetown University
Dr. Davis’ research focuses on refugees and conflict, specifically, Palestinian, Syrian, and Iraqi refugees. She has conducted research in Jordan, Turkey, Iraq, and Lebanon. She was also the lead qualitative researcher on a Georgetown University-International Organization for Migration longitudinal study of Iraqis displaced by ISIS/ISIL and their access to durable solutions. The study (2015-2021) followed over 3000 Iraqi families internally displaced in Iraq.

Her book, Palestinian Village Histories: Geographies of the Displaced, (Stanford University Press, 2011) was co-winner of the Middle East Studies Association’s Albert Hourani Book Award recognizing outstanding publications in Middle East studies. The book addresses how Palestinian refugees today write histories of their villages that were destroyed in the 1948 war, and the stories and commemorations of village life that are circulated and enacted in the diaspora. This work is based on over 120 village memorial books composed by refugees in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, and ethnographic research in these communities.

Professor Davis’ is currently writing a book about the conceptions of culture in the U.S. military’s war in Iraq. She examines the cultural training material produced by military institutions and contractors about Iraqis, Arabs, and Islam. Through interviews with U.S. soldiers and marines, her research discusses how the servicemen and women assess the cultural training they received and their experiences with Iraqi culture and society. Interviews with Iraqis provide perspective on how Iraqis experienced the American troops’ cultural knowledge in practice.

Her other research interests include Palestinian poster art ( and Palestinian social and cultural life prior to 1948. She has also collected over fifty oral histories of Palestinian Jerusalemites about their lives in the twentieth century.