Hybrid Event; In-Person & Zoom Links Above

Buell Hall, East Gallery (Maison Française)

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.

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.