Middle East Urbanism Beyond Conflict: Current Research, Ongoing Debates, and Next Directions
Graduate Student Conference, Columbia University
The Post-Conflict Cities Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation announces its Spring 2023 graduate student conference titled “Middle East Urbanism Beyond Conflict: Current Research, Ongoing Debates, and Next Directions,” to be held on February 16-17, 2023. This interdisciplinary conference 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 mostly 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 geo-political 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.
This two-day conference will include panels of graduate students led by faculty discussants along with a faculty roundtable on the current status and future of Middle Eastern urban studies. In coming together for this conference, we 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.
We invite interested graduate students to submit 300-400 word abstracts using this form by October 28, 2022. Abstracts can address urbanism in the region from a wide variety of lenses including urban planning, anthropology, history, sociology, architecture, media studies, and the like. The specific themes for each panel will be determined based on submitted and accepted abstracts. Limited funds are available to support travel to and from the conference, and the request for these funds is included in this form. Accepted participants will be notified by November 21, 2022.
For questions, please reach out to the Middle East Urbanism Beyond Conflict organizers at middleeasturbanism@gmail.com.
The event is co-sponsored by Columbia University's Post-Conflict Cities Lab, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, The Heyman Center for the Humanities, The Middle East Institute, and Maison Française.