Written by HESPAL TEAM
For 15 years, the Higher Education Scholarships for Palestinians (HESPAL) programme has played a vital role in strengthening Palestinian higher education – not only by supporting individual scholars, but by building long-term institutional capacity, academic leadership, and enduring partnerships between Palestinian and UK universities.
Launched in 2010 and managed by the British Council, HESPAL was designed with a clear purpose to support junior academic staff from Palestinian universities to pursue postgraduate study in the UK and return to their home institutions equipped to teach, research and lead. Since then, the programme has supported more than 250 scholars – over half of them women – across 38 UK universities, creating a critical mass of internationally trained academics embedded throughout the Palestinian higher education system.
As HESPAL marks its 15th anniversary, it is increasingly considered not simply a scholarship scheme, but a long-term partnership platform that has evolved alongside the sector it serves, adapted through consecutive crises and responsive to both immediate needs and future possibilities.
What distinguishes HESPAL from many international scholarship programmes is its institution-led model. Scholars are nominated by their home universities based on institutional priorities and all recipients commit to returning after completing their studies. This approach ensures that individual achievement translates into collective benefit.
Independent evaluation shows how this plays out in practice. Nearly 90 per cent of alumni actively apply the skills gained through their HESPAL studies, and over 60 per cent report career progression within two years of returning – moving from teaching assistant roles to lecturer positions, taking on departmental leadership responsibilities, or establishing new research groups and curricula.
These individual trajectories have had tangible institutional effects. Returning scholars have introduced new teaching methodologies, modernised curricula, strengthened research practices and contributed to the internationalisation strategies of their universities. Over time, relationships between scholars and their UK academic supervisors have evolved to produce joint publications, research collaborations and wider institutional partnerships that extend well beyond the scholarship period.
Behind these outcomes are deeply human stories that illustrate what academic opportunity can mean in fragile contexts. One HESPAL scholar, a Palestinian academic from Gaza, had spent years teaching under increasingly constrained conditions while trying to support his family on a limited income. Determined to continue his academic career and contribute more effectively to his university, he applied for a HESPAL scholarship to pursue doctoral research in the UK.
Securing the scholarship was only the beginning. Leaving Gaza required navigating complex administrative processes, prolonged delays, and significant uncertainty. Once in the UK, he continued his research while his family remained under the devastating war in Gaza – displaced multiple times, hungry, horrified and under severe danger. However, the only thing that kept him going, was his target to return home, to reunite with his family and to contribute to the rebuilding of a devastated higher education sector in Gaza.
For him, the scholarship represented far more than individual advancement. It was a way to sustain a future in academia, to deepen his research expertise, and to remain connected to a profession he viewed as essential to his society’s long-term resilience. Like many HESPAL scholars, he continues to see his academic work as inseparable from the responsibility to teach, mentor, and rebuild for the future of Palestine. Stories like this are echoed across the programme. Scholars describe returning to their institutions with renewed confidence, stronger professional networks, and a determination to pass on what they have learned to colleagues, students and future generations. Over time, this ‘multiplier effect’ has become one of HESPAL’s most powerful and enduring contributions.
HESPAL’s longevity is closely tied to its ability to adapt. Over fifteen years, the programme has navigated political instability, movement restrictions, the COVID-19 pandemic, and most recently, the devastating impact of the war on Gaza on Palestinian higher education, both in Gaza and the West Bank.
Since October 2023, the Gaza HE sector has suffered from the destruction of university infrastructure. Hundreds of academic staff and students have been killed as a result of Israeli airstrikes and extreme mobility constraints have devastated the operating capacity for Palestinian universities. In the West Bank, universities have suffered from recurred military aggression and invasions, over 1200 road barriers across the west bank blocking students and staff access to universities, in additions to the killing and arrests of tens of students across the west bank.
In response, the HESPAL team rapidly adapted programme processes, introduced additional flexibility for affected scholars, and piloted new pathways – including fellowship opportunities and alternative forms of academic support – to help sustain learning and research under extraordinary circumstances. These adaptations reflect a broader shift in how the programme is being conceived: not only as a route to postgraduate study, but as a framework for sustained academic partnership that can respond to changing sector needs.
Looking ahead, the HESPAL team increasingly sees the programme as an umbrella under which a wider range of higher education collaboration can sit. Alongside the core scholarship offer, this includes the potential for research partnerships, fellowships, staff exchange, and tailored initiatives that connect Palestinian and UK universities around shared priorities.
This vision responds to growing demand from Palestinian institutions for deeper, more diversified forms of engagement and to the significant movement of solidarity across UK academia seeking meaningful ways to support Palestinian higher education. While expansion in scholar numbers may not always be feasible, broadening the ways in which institutions connect and collaborate offers a realistic and strategic path for future growth.
Fifteen years on, HESPAL also offers important lessons about sustainability. Like many long-term development programmes, it operates within a complex funding landscape and remains reliant on external support. While this collaborative model has enabled flexibility and reach, it also highlights the importance of stable programme foundations, particularly for initiatives delivering long-term, system-level impact rather than short-term outputs.
Rather than viewing this as a weakness, the HESPAL experience underscores a wider insight for international education partnerships: sustained impact depends not only on funding scholarships, but on investing in the structures, people, and institutional relationships that allow programmes to endure and adapt over time.
As Palestinian higher education faces unprecedented challenges and prepares for recovery and reconstruction, the role of trusted, long-standing partnerships has never been more critical. HESPAL’s alumni network, institutional relationships, and accumulated experience position the programme as a key contributor to that future.
The 15th anniversary is therefore not only a moment to reflect on what has been achieved, but an opportunity to consider how programmes like HESPAL can continue to evolve – preserving knowledge, supporting academic leadership, and creating space for collaboration even in the most difficult circumstances.