Contextualizing Agency for Some Palestinian Refugee Women in Jordan

Abstract

This study explores how Palestinian refugee women articulate agency within the layered realities of camp life, through a participatory, arts-based methodology grounded in narrative inquiry and contextualized art therapy. Rather than applying external frameworks of resistance or empowerment, the research foregrounds agency as relational, contextual, and symbolically embodied. Engaging both Western and non-Western feminist thought, the study traces how women navigate social norms, religious ethics, and familial hierarchies—not only through speech, but also through silence, metaphor, and creative negotiation.

Working within a refugee camp setting, the research integrates image-making, response art, and collective dialogue to centre participants’ voices and forms of meaning-making. Central to their expressions was the recurring metaphor of birds, which emerged organically through their artwork and narratives. These bird symbols became a shared language through which women conveyed strategies of survival, defiance, endurance, and self-realization—each form of flight shaped by personal history and social structure, yet united by the desire to preserve an inner voice.

This study contributes to feminist scholarship by challenging universalist models of agency and calling for frameworks that recognize complexity, embeddedness, and cultural specificity. It further expands arts-based research by establishing contextualizing art therapy as a rigorous mode of inquiry—one that positions art therapy groups not merely as tools for healing, but as methods of generating embodied, culturally grounded knowledge. By adapting art therapy ethically to the political, social, and spiritual contexts in which it is applied, the research affirms its value beyond the clinical and into the epistemic. Through this approach, the study reimagines agency not as a fixed attribute or overt act, but as a living, creative force sustained through relation, resistance, and care.

Date of Award	2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Canterbury Christ Church University