Caecilia Pieri currently serves as Head of the Urban Observatory at the French Institute of the Near-East (IFPO), Beirut, where she brings a comparative approach to the urban field of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern studies in the field of urban history and urban anthropology. She is particularly concerned with cities in conflict, and the use of heritage as a social marker and tool for politics. She was a scientific editor in the field of architecture, heritage, and urban studies since 1989 in Paris. She then received her PhD at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, on the subject of the urban and architectural modernization of Baghdad, where she has been conducting fieldwork for eleven years. In 2013, she co-organized an international symposium which took place in Baghdad (April 16-18), entitled The architecture of modernity in Baghdad: from Le Corbusier to the Iraqi pioneers. An expert with the UNESCO (World Heritage) steering committee for the safeguard of urban and architectural modern heritage in the Arab World, she is the author of Baghdad Arts Deco, 1920-1950 (French version 2008, English at American University of Cairo Press, 2011, also translated into Arabic at Al-Mada Press Baghdad, 2009). She is preparing a book based on her PhD: Baghdad. La construction d’une capitale moderne, 1920-1960 (forthcoming Fall 2014, at the Presses de l’Ifpo).
