I am currently the Program Manager for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC) at MIT. I recently joined the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians and joined the Pratt Institute faculty as Visiting Associate Professor. I am also teach at Hunter College, in the Department of Political Science, teaching courses on Global Poverty and the Ethics of Development as well as the History of Global Urbanism. I am a Middle Eastern/Global South scholar, urbanist, historian and designer with published articles and contributed chapters in volumes on Urban Governance and Social Housing in the Middle East. I received my Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in Architectural History from UC Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies.
I earned my PhD in Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, with a concentration in Environmental Design and Urbanism in Developing Countries, and a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies. I am also an experience architectural practitioner and educator.
My doctoral research engaged with architectural design; architectural history; modern Middle Eastern history; development studies; neoliberal political economy; and notions of state, citizenship, and governance in modern urban environments. My current research focuses on the impact of 19th and 20th century industrialization and 21st century globalization on the material culture—specifically architectural objects—of the American city. This work is based on an exploration of the making and undoing of architectural icons and the landscape of ruin left behind. I am interested in studying the various mutations of the architectural object, and the growing complexities of place, its economic and political networks.
I am actively developing my manuscript, titled “Unplanning Amman” for submission to Cambridge University Press.