About

Eliana Abu-Hamdi, PhD is currently the Project Manager for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC), an Andrew W. Mellon global humanities research grant, housed in the Architecture Department at MIT. She is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Hunter College, in Manhattan. She teaches courses on Global Poverty, the Ethics of Development, and The History of Urbanism and Global Cities. She is an architectural historian, urbanist, designer and Middle Eastern/Global South scholar with published articles in the International Journal of Islamic Architecture, Traditional Dwellings and Settlement Review, Cities, and The Middle East Report. She also has contributed chapters in a volume on Urban Governance in the Middle East from McGill-Queens Press, and another on Social Housing in the Middle East from University of Indiana Press. 

She is currently actively developing her dissertation into a manuscript for submission to Cambridge University Press. She received her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in Architectural History from UC Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies, as well as a Master of Architecture degree from the Newschool of Architecture and Design. She is an experienced architectural practitioner and educator.

Her research on architecture and development in Jordan contributes to the debates on the political economy of urbanism in developing cities, thereby establishing a connection between their geopolitical histories and urban present.