A talk by Dr. Mona Harb, Professor of Urban Studies and Politics, American University of Beirut
Monday, 24 February, at 13:30
Albert Calsamiglia Room
Ciutadella Campus
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Mona Harb is a Professor of Urban Studies and Politics at the American University of Beirut where she is also co-founder and research lead at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research investigates governance and territoriality in contexts of contested sovereignty; urban activism and oppositional politics; and how people make collective life in fragmented localities. She is the author of Le Hezbollah à Beirut: de la banlieue à la ville, co-author of Leisurely Islam: Negotiating Geography and Morality in Shi’i South Beirut (with Lara Deeb), co-editor of Local Governments and Public Goods: Assessing Decentralization in the Arab World (with Sami Atallah), and co-editor of Refugees as City-Makers (with Mona Fawaz et al.). She serves on the editorial boards of MELG, IJMES, EPC, and CSSAME.
In this talk, Harb will present a brief history and overview of The Beirut Urban Lab, a collaborative and interdisciplinary research space at the American University of Beirut, that produces scholarship on the ongoing urban transformations of the built and natural environments in Lebanon, in the context of polycrises and protracted conflicts. The talk shares the modalities of work of the Lab, which combine critical inquiry with mapping and visual data production, showcases some of the ArcGIS data platforms produced in the past five years (2019-2024), and focuses on the work done during the 2023-24 Israeli war on Lebanon. The presentation centers how critical mapping and visualization operates as a capacious analytical research method, and an effective communication tool that can debunk dominant narratives while producing rigorous knowledge on urban transformations and impacts, and advancing principles for inclusive, livable and viable built and natural environments.
Hosted by the UPF in Solidarity with Palestine collective, the Red Universitaria por Palestina (RUxP), the Research Group on Gender and Inequalities (GRETA), and the Climate Change and Human Mobility Project (CCHMP).
