Submitted by M.L. R. Grove on Tue, 10/07/2018 - 16:38
PhD students of the Centre for Urban conflicts Research (UCR) Dena Qaddumi, Anwar Jaber, Ahmed El-Husseiny, Yasmina El Chami and Nadi Abusadaa presented their research at the BRISMES Annual conference on June 25th in London.
Their UCR panel was entitled "Reconsidering Political Narratives: Architectural and Urban Approaches to Studying Arab Cities". It examined specific sites - including Ramallah, Cairo, Beirut - that illustrate how architecture (and by extension the city) is an embodiment of social and political processes.
About the panel:
Despite the ‘spatial and urban turn’ in the social sciences broadly and Middle East Studies particularly, the disciplines of political science, international relations, sociology and history continue to dominate the field. Architecture and cities have tended to remain secondary research objects operating in the background. This episteme has framed the questions and methods of the field of Middle East Studies. In parallel, research on the Middle East has not been prominent in architectural and urban studies. When the region is represented in these disciplines it tends to be associated with the far past and in contradistinction to the present. Contemporary Middle Eastern cities and architectural practices are rarely featured at the forefront of architectural and urban research. This panel will present architectural and urban research from members of the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research (UCR) at the University of Cambridge, a research unit dedicated to investigating cities that experience conflicts, including those related to ethnicity, nationalism, religion and class. Papers will address the relationships between Arab cities across space and time and examine specific sites - including Ramallah, Cairo, Beirut - that illustrate how architecture (and by extension the city) is an embodiment of social and political processes. The session will question the established historiography of the region and suggest that architectural approaches to this history will trace new paths to the present. Papers will show that architectural and urban methodologies can open and redefine central concepts in Middle East studies including conflict, state building, governance, revolution, modernization, and neoliberalism.
