Dr. Josepha Ivanka (Joshka) Wessels is a Senior Researcher at Lund University, Sweden. She currently is based as Social Scientist on Visualisation and Immersive Technologies at the Virtual Reality Lab, Design Sciences Department. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Syria Studies at Saint Andrews University (UK). * Syria expert scholar, with particular expertise in digital media, visualisation, rural development, water issues, refugees and sustainability studies. * Ethnographic filmmaker and expert on digital video and immersive technologies such as Virtual Reality and 360-degree film production. * UNESCO-world expert on the rehabilitation of qanat systems in the MENA-region; traditional underground water tunnels. * Expert on environmental peacebuilding and hydropolitics in the Jordan River Basin. * Member of the Lund University Pufendorf Research Theme "Nature of Peace" (2017-2018). She is currently carrying out a project using Virtual Reality technology on the human impact of water shortage in Jordan and Sweden and carrying out research on Syrian Refugees in Europe, in particular Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. Since 2012, she has also engaged in social service activities with Syrian refugees, whom arrived in Sweden and Denmark. She carried out research and fieldwork with Syrians in the Öresund region in 2016, for a collaborative pilot project at CMES. As an anthropological filmmaker, Joshka is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose films have been broadcast on BBC World and Al Jazeera English. Her PhD thesis was accompanied with three films as well as her postdoctoral research on hydropolitics. Currently she is working on an anthropological feature film, documenting the lives of extended Syrian households in the Netherlands and Germany, with whom she has filmed 18 years ago in Syria. Joshka is the chairperson of Al Seeraj Malmö and boardmember of the Syrian Swedish Association. She is a member of the coordinating board of the Centre for Resolution of International Conflicts (CRIC) at the University of Copenhagen, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the Royal Anthropological Institute - UK (RAI) and the Nordic Middle East Society.

Media Arts

Middle East/Near East Studies

Arab-Israeli Conflict

Conflict Resolution

Cinema/Film

Democratization

Diaspora/Refugee Studies

Identity/Representation

Peace Studies

Environment

Fertile Crescent

Syria

All Middle East

Palestine

Lebanon

Iraq

West Bank

Sudan

Syrian Refugees

Syrian Documentary Film And Activism

Sustainable Development In MENA Region

Dutch (native)

Arabic (advanced)

English (fluent)

German (intermediate)

French (intermediate)

Swedish (advanced)