Event Program

MONDAY, MARCH 20

5:30 INTRODUCTION

  • Alan Shihadeh – Dean of the Faculty of Engineering & Architecture
  • Mona Fawaz – Associate Professor and Coordinator, MUPP/MUD, AUB

6:00 KEYNOTE 1

  • Ananya Roy – The City as Sanctuary: The Politics of Space and Scale in the Age of Trumpism

TUESDAY, MARCH 21

9:30-11:00 PANEL 1: THE ‘URBAN’ IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS

  • Dennis Rodgers – Gangsters as infrastructure: Criminal planning in the age of urban anti-politics
  • Julie-Anne Boudreau – Urban life is political life: Ethnographic reflections on contemporary political action
  • Sami Zemni – Urban Contentious Politics and the Tunisian Revolution: Some reflections on the relational nature of the urban

11:00-11:30 Coffee Break

11:30-1:30 PM ROUNDTABLE 1: COMPARING MOBILIZATION EXPERIENCES: EMERGING STRATEGIES AND FRAMES

  • Yasar Adanali – Designing and building hope together: Tenants rights to housing in Turkey through collective action and resistance
  • Nadine Bekdache – Resisting Evictions in Beirut
  • Isidro López – Serving on Madrid’s regional parliament for Podemos
  • Nizar Saghieh – Strategic Litigation as a Strategy for Change

1:30 – 3:00 Lunch Break

3:00-4:30 PANEL 2: ALTERNATIVE URBAN IDEALS?

  • Dimitris Dalakoglou – Infrastructural gap and the future of cities
  • Farah al-Nakib – Restoring the Urban Commons: Youth Activism and the Appropriation of Public Space in Kuwait
  • Mona Harb – Cities and Political Change: How Young Activists in Beirut Bred an Urban Social Movement

4:30 – 5:00 Coffee Break

5:00 KEYNOTE 2

  • Asef Bayat – Urbanity and Insurrection: Cities of the Arab Spring

7:30 MOVIE SHOWING: (BEIRUT ORIENT INSTITUTE)

  • Soraya El Kahlaoui – Landless Moroccans

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 22

9:30-11:00 PANEL 3: DISCONTENT AND MOBILIZATION IN THE FACE OF NEOLIBERAL POLICIES

  • Gulcin Lelandais – Contentious politics under neoliberal urbanism in Turkey: Thoughts from Gezi park uprising and neighborhood resistances in metropolitan cities
  • Azam Khatam – State Rescaling and the right to the city movement in Tehran
  • Soraya El Kahlaoui – Resisting modernity: claiming the right to housing

11:00 – 11:30 Coffee Break

11:30-1:00 PM PANEL 5: URBAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE

  • Kareem Ibrahim – Urban Activism in Egypt… A Reality Check
  • Anna Domaradzka – Co-creating urban alternatives: Grassroots’ movements as challengers of the urban policy field
  • Thanassis Cambanis – Beirut Madinati and the Limits of People Power

1:00-2:30 Lunch Break

2:30-4:00 PANEL 4: URBAN STRUGGLES AT THE MARGINS

  • Sophie Gonick – Provincializing protest: Migrant women and the making of urban activism in contemporary Madrid
  • Keisha-Khan Y. Perry – Evictions and convictions: State violence and black dispossession in the Americas
  • Richard Pithouse – A Decade of Struggle in Durban

4:00-5:30 ROUNDTABLE 2: TOWARDS AN URBANISME ENGAGÉ

  • Mona Fawaz – Social Justice and the City, IFI/AUB
  • Tolga Islam – Yildiz Technical University
  • Yahia Shawkat – 10 Tooba
  • Jad Tabet – Naqabati
  • Aram Yeretzian – Green Building Council / AUB

5:30-6:00 CLOSING PANEL – WRAPPING UP THE DEBATES