Dr Aya Nassar

Biography	I am an interdisciplinary scholar in between politics, Urban and Political Geography, and Middle East studies. I write about questions of memory, archiving, poetics of space, infrastructure and affective and material aspects of cities. My doctoral research included investigating the archives of national Egyptian architects who were designing plans for post-colonial/post-independence Cairo. My post-doctoral research focused on the aesthetics and poetics used to represent and depict Arab cities after 2011, neighbourhood storytelling and memory in Coventry, and Space and Memory work in Egypt. I am firmly guided by a postcolonial framework in my research and political commitments, and I am inspired by decolonial and feminist approaches in teaching and research. I am currently a British Academy fellow, conducting the research project "When the city stands still" (2023-2025). Prior to the fellowship, I worked as a Lecturer in the Geohumanities in RHUL, a Lecturer of Human Geography in Durham University, and a Teaching Fellow in the School of Global Studies, Sussex University. I have a broad teaching experience in Social, Cultural, Urban and Political Geography as well as research-led teaching in Geographies of Development and Critical Geographies of the Middle East. In the past, I have co-convened the Warwick Political Geography group (Warwick, 2015-2018). I co-initiated the Geography and Middle East North East network (2020-2021) with Dr Olivia Mason in Durham and Newcastle Universities. We currently convene this network alongside Dr Joanna Allan (Northumbria) and Dr Mark Griffith (Newcastle ). I am also one of the editorial team of Arab Urbanism, a bi-lingual open access platform that publishes on urban questions in the Arab World.
Research Interests	Cities Middle East Postcolonial geographies Affect Poetics Built environment and infrastructure Geohumanities

Biography

I am an interdisciplinary scholar in between politics, Urban and Political Geography, and Middle East studies. I write about questions of memory, archiving, poetics of space, infrastructure and affective and material aspects of cities. My doctoral research included investigating the archives of national Egyptian architects who were designing plans for post-colonial/post-independence Cairo. My post-doctoral research focused on the aesthetics and poetics used to represent and depict Arab cities after 2011, neighbourhood storytelling and memory in Coventry, and Space and Memory work in Egypt. I am firmly guided by a postcolonial framework in my research and political commitments, and I am inspired by decolonial and feminist approaches in teaching and research.

I am currently a British Academy fellow, conducting the research project "When the city stands still" (2023-2025). Prior to the fellowship, I worked as a Lecturer in the Geohumanities in RHUL, a Lecturer of Human Geography in Durham University, and a Teaching Fellow in the School of Global Studies, Sussex University. I have a broad teaching experience in Social, Cultural, Urban and Political Geography as well as research-led teaching in Geographies of Development and Critical Geographies of the Middle East.

In the past, I have co-convened the Warwick Political Geography group (Warwick, 2015-2018). I co-initiated the Geography and Middle East North East network (2020-2021) with Dr Olivia Mason in Durham and Newcastle Universities. We currently convene this network alongside Dr Joanna Allan (Northumbria) and Dr Mark Griffith (Newcastle ). I am also one of the editorial team of Arab Urbanism, a bi-lingual open access platform that publishes on urban questions in the Arab World.

Research Interests

Cities
Middle East
Postcolonial geographies
Affect
Poetics
Built environment and infrastructure
Geohumanities