Layal Ftouni is an Assistant Professor of Gender Studies and Critical Theory at the Graduate Gender Programme, and a research affiliate at the Institute of Cultural Inquiry (ICON) at Utrecht University.  She is currently working on an NWO Veni  (2022-2025) funded research project entitled Ecologies of Violence: Affirmations of Life at the Frontiers of Survival. The research explores the politics of life and living at the boundaries with death (both human and environmental) in conditions of war and settler colonialism, focusing on Palestine.