On 6 December 2025, Brief Encounters published the first contributions to a Special Issue composed of work contributed by students and faculty of the English Department at Al-Aqsa University in Gaza. This Special Issue amplifies the voices of students and academics in Gaza, highlighting the significance of their knowledge to discussions on Pedagogical Resilience, Challenges and Adaptive Strategies, and deepens global understanding of the war on Gaza since October 2023. Since the call for papers in April 2025, submissions have responded to and defied the lived realities of indiscriminate bombardment, enforced displacement, and the systematic denial of vital resources, in creative and critical forms of writing and image-making. Offering a counter-vocabulary to the violence of occupation at a time when even speech itself carries risks, the contributors’ work attends to profound and immeasurable loss whilst upholding shared tenacity and hope. We warmly invite you to engage with this work in a commitment to Palestinian scholars’ determination to continue teaching and learning despite the mass destruction of higher education in Palestine.

Creative Encounters

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