Rula Shahwan is Director of the Library and Visual Archive Department at the Arab American University (AAUP), where she leads initiatives dedicated to preserving and curating Palestinian visual heritage. She is also a doctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt. Her dissertation, which explores fragmented memory and the looting, destruction and loss of Palestinian archives under Israeli settler colonialism, has been submitted for review.
Shahwan specializes in Palestinian cinema and visual culture, combining administrative leadership with academic research and teaching in the fields of archives, memory studies and film. She has also published several works on these subjects.