Professor Harbord is currently a senior lecturer in politics at Liverpool John Moores University, where she teaches on the Criminology and History programs, in the areas of human rights, global citizenship, and the history of the Middle East. She provides Country of Origin Information for the cases of Palestinian asylum seekers to the European Union, and the majority of her current research is policy-related. Katherine is a seasoned election observer, is passionate about democracy, and has been an ally in the protest against antisemitism in the British academy since 2002. She is a graduate of the 2019 ISGAP-Oxford Summer Institute. She details her project below:
“I am currently researching what are widely described as the “last anti-Jewish riots” to happen in the United Kingdom, in 1947. These broke out in response to events in Palestine, then still under the British Mandate: the Irgun had kidnapped, and subsequently murdered, two British sergeants, in retaliation for the execution of several of its fighters. However, on Merseyside in particular, there were already signs before this of growing anti-Jewish sentiment, connected with events in Palestine, including the refusal to process kosher meat, until violence against British forces in Palestine had ceased. This is something I want to unpick further, through my research: this kind of antisemitism – of collectively blaming Jewish people everywhere for the actions of some Jews elsewhere -generally is more associated with events after the establishment of the State of Israel. At present, I am trying to trace back the development of this sentiment, initially by using local newspaper reports, through the history of the Mandate, to track the development of this idea, so that I can locate the 1947 riots more thoroughly within the historical context.”