Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Graduate Gender Programme at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Since 2022, Layal has been working on a project entitled Ecologies of Violence: Affirmations of Life at the Frontiers of Survival. The project explores the politics of life and living in conditions of proximity to death and debilitation, both human and environmental, in the settler colonial context of Palestine. In 2021, she received a four-year Research Council VENI grant in the Humanities and Social Sciences to support this project.  Before joining Utrecht University, she lectured at SOAS, University of London, and earned her PhD from the University of Westminster. She writes across the fields of cultural studies, gender studies, Palestine studies and critical theory. Her writing has appeared on different platforms and is featured in a variety of publications, the most recent of which is: “‘They make death and I am the labor of Life:’ Palestinian Prisoners Sperm Smuggling as an Affirmation of Life" published in Critical Times (2024). Layal is also founding member of Dutch Scholars for Palestine and a member of the Editorial Board of Lateral, a peer-review open-access journal of the Cultural Studies Association.