How do Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon sustain a cohesive collective memory of the Nakba? New research by University of Michigan School of Information PhD candidates Ghadir Awad, Lavinia Dunagan, David Gamba and Tam Rayan attempts to answer this question. 

Their paper, “Collective Memory and Narrative Cohesion: A Computational Study of Palestinian Refugee Oral Histories in Lebanon” was presented at the 1st International Workshop on Nakba Narratives as Language Resources on January 20, 2025. The workshop is part of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics. 

The Nakba, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. 

“The significance of this paper primarily lies in reclaiming space for Palestinian narratives within computational science, a field uniquely positioned to document the Nakba’s lived memories while resisting distortion,” Awad says. 

The paper presents key insights regarding how refugee communities, particularly Palestinians,  preserve memory through geographic proximity, communal ties and lived experiences. It draws from Maurice Halbwachs’ theory of socially constructed memory by quantifying the interplay of geography, gender and communal bonds in Palestinian oral histories. For this, the researchers drew from the Palestinian Oral History Archive (POHA), a repository of over 1,000 audio and video interviews with Nakba refugees in Lebanon. 

“This paper underscores the enduring power of oral history in safeguarding the authenticity of the Palestinian narrative,” Awad says. “Additionally, these findings carry broader implications. First, displacement does not dissolve collective memory but can reinforce it through exile-forged bonds. Second, memory is dynamic, evolving alongside conditions of oppression and resistance. Third, intersectional analysis is essential to oral history, as gender, origin, and exile collectively shape narration of resilience.

“Ultimately, this work reaffirms oral history and continues to contribute to the authenticity of the Palestinian story and how the documented narrative preserves memory from erasure and continues to preserve Palestinian ultimate right of liberation and freedom.”  

Read “Collective Memory and Narrative Cohesion: A Computational Study of Palestinian Refugee Oral Histories in Lebanon” on arXiv. View the abstract below: 

This study uses the Palestinian Oral History Archive (POHA) to investigate how Palestinian refugee groups in Lebanon sustain a cohesive collective memory of the Nakba through shared narratives. Grounded in Halbwachs' theory of group memory, we employ statistical analysis of pairwise similarity of narratives, focusing on the influence of shared gender and location. We use textual representation and semantic embeddings of narratives to represent the interviews themselves. Our analysis demonstrates that shared origin is a powerful determinant of narrative similarity across thematic keywords, landmarks, and significant figures, as well as in semantic embeddings of the narratives. Meanwhile, shared residence fosters cohesion, with its impact significantly amplified when paired with shared origin. Additionally, women's narratives exhibit heightened thematic cohesion, particularly in recounting experiences of the British occupation, underscoring the gendered dimensions of memory formation. This research deepens the understanding of collective memory in diasporic settings, emphasizing the critical role of oral histories in safeguarding Palestinian identity and resisting erasure.

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Learn more about UMSI PhD candidates Ghadir Awad, Lavinia Dunagan, David Gamba and Tam Rayan by visiting their UMSI profiles.