Events
Cosponsors
- The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities
- Graduate School for Architecture, Planning, and Preservation
- Middle East Institute
- Columbia Maison Française
Organizer
- Post-Conflict Cities Lab
Contact
Notes
- Free and open to the public
- No registration necessary
Middle East Urbanism Beyond Conflict: Current Research and Debates is an interdisciplinary conference that seeks to bring together doctoral students and scholars working on issues related to urbanism and the production of space in Middle Eastern and North African cities (MENA). The MENA region has been mainly discussed and narrated from the perspective of conflict and delineated as a space from which theory cannot emerge. However, the critical research coming out from the Middle East and North African cities is providing cutting-edge scholarly contributions on how urban space is shaped by a range of actors (including political parties, international aid organizations, religious groups, and NGOs) and a variety of geopolitical flows (such as capital, migration, labor, revolutionary solidarities, and militarization) that produce space and the built environment from housing and infrastructure to borders and refugee camps. This emerging body of urban scholarship is contributing to theorizing about the urban condition from the Global South at large.
In coming together for this conference, the organizers look forward to providing the space to push the conversation on urbanism and spatial production in Middle Eastern and North African cities, and the theoretical implications of theorizing about the urban from the MENA region.
The conference will also be live streamed over Zoom. Register individually for each day below:
Day 1
Day 2
Program
February 16, 2023 Thursday
9:30am - 10:00am EDT
Opening Remarks
Hiba Bou Akar
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning
Columbia University
10:00am - 11:45am EDT
Ruinations and Rebuilding
Against Ruination: Space, Creativity, and Political Identities in Beirut and Aleppo
Dina Yunis
PhD candidate, Middle Eastern Studies
Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at King's College London
A Polycrisis and an Absent State: Implications of Post-Disaster Urban Recovery in Beirut, Lebanon
Hayfaa Abou Ibrahim and Rand Mekaram
PhD Student, Community and Regional Planning - University of British Columbia; and PhD Student, Urban and Regional Planning, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Slow Violence in Sheikh Jarrah
Thayer Hastings
PhD candidate, Anthropology
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
Utopia in the Ghost City: Competing Visions for Varosha
Nikolas Michael
MS student, Urban Planning, GSAPP
Columbia University
The Politics of Urban Identity in Diyarbakir
Idil Onen
PhD student, Human Geography
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
DISCUSSANT
Claire Panetta
Term Assistant Professor of Urban Studies
Barnard University
1:00pm - 2:45pm EDT
Resistances and (Imagined) Urban Futures
Qiddiya’s Journey: A Case Study in Urban Imagineering and Image Laundering
Andres Ramirez
PhD Student, Urban Planning
University of California, Los Angeles
Parallax Haifa
Lama Suleiman
PhD Student, Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
Columbia University
Reading Urban Futures: Urban Imaginations in "Palestine +100"
Mekarem Eljamal
PhD Student, Urban Planning
Columbia University
Means of Environmental Manipulation in Sliwan
Mahdi Sabbagh
PhD Student, Architecture, GSAPP
Columbia University
Urban Collective Action in Damascus, Aleppo, and Hama
Motasem Abuzaid
PhD Student, Politics
University of Oxford
DISCUSSANT
Rosie Bsheer
Associate Professor of History
Harvard University
3:00pm - 4:45pm EDT
Encampments and Informalities
Border Securitization and Human Mobility on Samos
Eric Raimondi
MA Student, Near Eastern Studies, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
New York University
Urban Encampment in Yarmouk
Matthew DeMaio
PhD Candidate, Anthropology
George Washington University
Self-help and Mutual Aid in Hay al-Tanak
Marylin Chahine
MS Student, Public and Urban Policy
The New School
Placemaking in Tehran: Enghelab Street and Spatialities of Changing Perceptions
Amir Khaghani
PhD candidate, Global and Sociocultural Studies
Florida International University
Soon-To-Be But Not Quite Yet: Migration, Urban Transformation, and Extended Transiency in Fikirtepe, Istanbul
Francesco Pasta
PhD Student, Urban Planning, Design and Policy, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies
Politecnico di Milano
DISCUSSANT
Berna Turam
Professor of Sociology
Northeastern University
5:30pm - 7:15pm EDT
Faculty Roundtable
Hiba Bou Akar
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning
Columbia University
Claire Panetta
Assistant Professor of Urban Studies
Barnard University
Rosie Bsheer
Associate Professor of History
Harvard University
Berna Turam
Professor of Sociology
Northeastern University
Arang Keshavarzian
Associate Professor and Department Chair of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
New York University
Ziad Abu Rish
Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies
Bard College
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Bard College
MODERATOR
Calvin Harrison
Columbia University
February 17, 2023 Friday
10:00am - 11:45am EDT
Environments and Infrastructures
The Jordan River: Memory, Displacement, and Return
Megan Awwad
PhD Student, American Studies and Ethnicity
University of Southern California
Constructing Water: The Infrastructure and Politics of Desalination in Kuwait
Rawan Alsaffar
Ddes Candidate, Graduate School of Design
Harvard University
Dashed Line: A Deconstruction of Wadi Gaza’s Reality
Anas Al-Khatib & Raneem Ayyad
MA Students, Human Rights and the Arts
Bard College
Building Lebanon's National Electricity Headquarters as Infrastructure
Alice Kezhaya
PhD Student, Global Studies
University of California, Santa Barbara
The Contentious Ring Road: The Politics of Urban Mobility (In)Justice in Cairo
Ingy Higazy
PhD Candidate in Politics
University of California, Santa Cruz
DISCUSSANT
Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
Bard College
1:00pm - 2:45pm EDT
Political Economies of Land
State and Religious Institutions Relations in Governing Urban Change and Tackling Urban Inequalities: Insights From Iran, Tehran
Azadeh Mashayekhi
Lecturer, Bartlett Development Planning Unit
University College London
Uneven Housing Development under Syria’s Ba’ath Party
John Jamil Kallas
MA Student, Near Eastern Studies, Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies
New York University
Negotiating the Legal Landscape on Cairo's Periphery
Ibrahim Abdou
PhD Candidate, Department of Architecture
University of Cambridge
Baltaga, Maslaha, and the Political Economy of Violence in Boulaq Abule’lla
Omnia Khalil
PhD candidate, Anthropology
The Graduate Center, City University of New York
The Slaughterhouse of the Year 2000: Labor Struggles and the Production of Space
Diala Lteif
Postodoctoral Fellow, Faculty of History
University of Cambridge
DISCUSSANT
Arang Keshavarzian
Associate Professor and Department Chair of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies
New York University
3:00pm - 4:45pm EDT
Urban Histories
Resisting Dispossession: A History of Ramallah’s Shopkeepers
Nadia Tadros
PhD Candidate , Middle East History
Brown University
Planning as Risk Management: Soldiers, Land Agents and Spies in Colonial Morocco
Asmaa Elgamal
PhD Candidate, Department of Urban Studies and Planning
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Solidere’s Predecessors: Class and Urban Planning in Downtown Beirut, 1958-1975
Jan Altaner
PhD Student, Faculty of History at the
University of Cambridge
Beyond Oil and the State: New Histories for Kuwait City
Rawan Hayat
MA Student in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies
Columbia University
Nighttime in the City: Infrastructures of Popular Culture in Beirut (1940s-1950s)
Janina Shirin Santer
PhD Student, History Department
Columbia University
DISCUSSANT
Ziad Abu-Rish
Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle Eastern Studies
Bard College
4:45pm - 5:00pm EDT
Closing Remarks
Hiba Bou Akar
Assistant Professor of Urban Planning
Columbia University