Alia Rayyan holds an MA degree in International Politics with a focus on the Middle East, Sociology and Art History (University of Hamburg, School of Oriental and African Studies – University of London) and completed her PhD in Cultural Studies at Leuphana University in 2022. Between 2016 and 2019, she was a member of the DFG supported research training group “Cultures of Critique” Leuphana University. In her interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation, “Decolonizing Socially Engaged Art Practice in Non-Western Context,” she questions the dominant view of public space in art research and focuses on knowledge generation from art practice as a further tool for theoretical discourse.

Rayyan has worked for over 15 years as an art critic, writer, lecturer, policy advisor and curator in Berlin, Beirut, New York, Amman and Ramallah for international cultural organizations and art magazines. As a co-founder of the art magazine “Bidoun” for contemporary art from the MENA region, she accompanied the beginnings of the new Arab cultural scene and followed its development. She directed the Al Hoash Gallery in Jerusalem from 2013-2016, where her socially engaged art program and urban interventions set a new focus in the discourse on the role of art in (public) spaces of conflict.