City Debates 2022 Bios

Lina Abou-Habib is the Director of the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut. She also teaches undergraduate and graduate gender courses at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at the American University of Beirut and is the Gender Project Director for the AUB MEPI-TLS Program. She currently serves on the Boards of Haven for Artist and the Collective for Research and Training on Development – Action. She also serves as MENA Advisor for the Urgent Action Fund and is a member of the Editorial Committee of the Gender and Development Journal published by Oxfam. Lina Abou-Habib was previously the Executive Director of Women’s Learning Partnership and before that, the director of CRTD.A. She has worked extensively with the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) and with several international and regional organisations in designing and managing programmes in the Middle East and North Africa region on issues related to gender and citizenship, economy, trade and gender and leadership. She served as the Secretary and then as the Chair of AWID and has considerable experience in feminist qualitative research, gender analysis, and training/facilitation and writes regularly on the issues of care work, citizenship, feminist recovery, and feminist movements in the MENA region. She was a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Applied Humanities, Institute of Public Policy (Auckland University of Technology). As a global gender consultant, Abou-Habib worked in most countries of the MENA region, in West Africa and the Caucuses.

Hayfa Abou-Ibrahim is a researcher working on housing justice and the right to the city at the Beirut Urban Lab. She is currently involved in three projects: (i) the impact of housing financialization on vulnerable households and their access to social protection, (ii) urban precarity in the city, and (iii) the return to life to the blast affected neighborhoods. Hayfaa holds a Master’s in Urban Planning and Policy from the American University of Beirut (2021) and a Master’s in Architecture from the Lebanese University (2018).

Howayda Al-Harithy is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the American University of Beirut where she is currently serving as Founding Director of the School of Design. She holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the Oregon School of Design, a Master of Science in Architecture from MIT, and a PhD in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University. She is also a Research Director at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research focuses on urban heritage with emphasis on the theoretical debate on heritage construction and consumption related to identity building and post-war reconstruction in the Arab world. Her current work conceptualizes urban recovery in relation to processes of historical editing, urban trauma, and protracted displacement. She is widely published with over 50 articles, book chapters, and reports in leading journals and refereed books. She is the editor of and contributor to Lessons in Post-War Reconstruction: Case Studies from Lebanon in the Aftermath of the 2006 War (Routledge, 2010) and a second edited volume entitled Urban Recovery: Intersecting Displacement with Reconstruction (Routledge 2021)

David Aouad holds a master’s degree in Urban Planning and a bachelor’s in Architecture from the University of Montreal. He is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Lebanese American University and the Director of the Institute for Environmental Studies and Research (IESR). Aouad’s research agenda revolves mainly around topics of critical importance within the public realm such as residual spaces, disconnected urban fragments within divided cities, urban heat islands, rural regeneration, urban crisis management and sustainable neighborhood planning. He is the founding partner and design principal of the firm DAJH Architects, a fully-fledged concept driven international practice established in Beirut, focused on architecture, urban planning, landscape, and interiors. He is also, since 2016, member of the Municipal Council of Hasroun, actively involved in funded regenerative community projects for his native village. He is the author of Leftover spaces for the mitigation of urban overheating in Municipal Beirut (2018), Sustainable Beirut City Planning Post August 2020: Case Study of Karantina in Medawar District (2021) and Neighborhood Planning for a Divided City: The Case of Beirut (2021).

Joseph Bahout is the Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut. He earned a degree in Economics from the American University of Beirut, before studying International Relations at Sciences Po Paris and then acquiring a PhD in Political Science at the same institution. He has taught at Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut (1993-2004), and has been a researcher at the French Centre d’études et de recherches sur le Moyen-Orient contemporain (Beirut, 1993-2000). In parallel, he had several political and civil activities in Lebanon between 1993 and 2003. Joseph Bahout moved to Paris in 2005 where he is now a professor of Middle-Eastern Studies at Sciences Po Paris, a senior fellow at Académie diplomatique international. He also works as a Consultant for the Policy Planning Unit at the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He has published two books on Syria and on Lebanon, besides several articles and chapters on Middle-Eastern politics. He is currently achieving a book on Lebanon’s post-war period and the Lebanese-Syrian relations.

Mariam Bazzi is a researcher trained in landscape architecture and urban design. She is working as a researcher at the Beirut Urban Lab on projects related to landscape heritage, forms of archiving and unarchiving the city, and urban recovery. Her research interests also include water management and the governance of riparian landscapes. She holds a Master’s degree in Urban Design and a Bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the American University of Beirut.

Mahmoud Bou Kanaan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Landscape Architecture from the American University of Beirut, and is current working on his thesis in Urban Design at the Maroun Semaan Faculty of Engineering and Architecture. He investigates the (re)production of open public spaces and is an advocate for making them more inclusive. He is currently part of the Beirut Urban Lab’s team exploring spatial analysis and design strategies for an integrated vision for public open spaces, as part of Beirut’s post-blast recovery initiatives.

Abir Cheaitli is an architect, researcher and urban designer. She holds a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the Lebanese American University, and a master’s degree in urban design from the American University of Beirut. She also holds a Pro-Green diploma in green technologies and buildings. Her research investigates socio-spatial practices, mapping, urban infographics and emergent tools in visualization. She is a researcher at the Beirut Urban Lab working on post-blast recovery in Karantina.

Luna Dayekh is a researcher holding a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Politics from the University of Sheffield. Her current work at the Beirut Urban Lab focuses on the actors engaged in post-blast urban recovery and unfolding governance processes and dynamics at the neighbourhood scale. Her research interests include urban governance, political ecology, and alternative economies.

Leyla El-Sayed Hussein holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture with a minor in Arabic Literature from the American University of Beirut, and a Master’s in Architecture and Digital Theory from The Bartlett, University College London. Her research falls at the intersection of historical architectural urban narratives and the boom of the digital age. She is an adjunct faculty member at the School of Architecture and Design at LAU. She researches, teaches, and writes about digital philosophy and architecture. She is a researcher at the Beirut Urban Lab engaged in developing the LevantCarta knowledge portal.

Mona Fawaz is Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at the American University of Beirut. She co-founded the Beirut Urban Lab at the American University of Beirut, a regional research center invested in working towards more inclusive, just, and viable cities. Mona is also the director of the Social Justice and the City research program based at the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy at AUB. She was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University during the 2014/15 academic year and in Summer 2017. Mona’s research spans across urban history and historiography, social and spatial justice, informality and the law, land, housing, property and space, as well as planning practice, theory and pedagogy. She is the author of over 50 scholarly articles, book sections, and reports in Arabic, French and English. She has also worked as a consultant, advising on urban and regional development as well as housing, land, and property issues. In addition, Mona has been tightly involved in Beirut’s ongoing transformations by publishing in the local press and speaking in numerous local venues where she has advocated for upgrading informal settlements, protecting the urban commons, improving urban livability, adopting more inclusive planning standards, and more generally, defending the right to the city for the urban majorities.

Ali Ghaddar is an urban planner, designer, and architect. He holds a master’s in urban planning and policy from the American University of Beirut (2020). His thesis looked on performance-based planning and its adaptability to the Lebanese context, working on the intersection of strategic planning, urban regulations, and governance. He has also worked on developing soft mobility strategies. Ali co-founded District D, a multidisciplinary collaborative initiative of urbanists primarily devoted to designing and implementing “tactical” interventions in public spaces, particularly with the vision of higher inclusion. Since September 2020, Ali has joined the urban recovery track at the Beirut Urban Lab.

Ahmad Gharbieh is Assistant Professor and Coordinator of the Graphic Design Program at the Department of Architecture and Design, American University of Beirut. He is co-founder of Beirut Urban Lab, a collaborative and interdisciplinary research space where he is Research Lead of the critical mapping track. His scholarly work explores data visualization as a method of researching, representing and analyzing socio-spatial phenomena and has covered many subjects including militarization and security, public space, building development, state and sectarian governance, urban recovery, and refugee practices in the city. His work in/on critical cartography has been published in both academic and public venues and exhibited/presented in Barcelona, Beirut, Berlin, Leeds, Mexico City, Montreal, Mumbai, Paris, Rotterdam, and Sharjah, among others.

Lynn Hamdar is an Urban Designer/Planner and Architect, currently working on city scale projects in the PUD department at Dar Al-Handasah (Shair and Partners). Her experience covers neighborhood scale and city scale urban projects in addition to rural high level design. As a former urban researcher at the Beirut Urban Lab at AUB, her research covered vulnerability, housing and open space in the neighborhoods affected by the Beirut Port explosion. She is interested in researching urban politics and conflict management in the city with a focus on ownership and sectarian conflict.

Mona Harb is 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 cities. 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.), in addition to more than 80 journal articles, books chapters, essays and technical reports. She serves on the editorial boards of MELG, IJMES, EPC, and CSSAME.

Melanie Hauenstein is the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Resident Representative for Lebanon since February 2022. Prior to that she served as Regional Adviser in UNDP’s Arab States Bureau in New York, where she managed the country desks for Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Libya and the Maghreb. From June to September, she served as UNDP Resident Representative a.i. for Libya. She joined the UN in 2005, as an electoral affairs officer working on the first democratic elections in DR Congo, and as the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Resident/Humanitarian Coordinator, the same position she held in Sudan in 2009. In 2010, she joined UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery in New York where she later also worked for UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In 2014, she joined the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA). In 2016, she served as the Senior Stabilization Adviser in the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo (MONUSCO). Before joining the UN, Melanie worked in Central America for an NGO on rural development and for UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Costa Rica and in Germany for cultural management firms. She holds an MSc in Population and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and studied international politics, sociology and economics in Regensburg, Leipzig and Paris. She speaks English, German, Spanish and French.

Antoine Kallab is currently the Beirut Urban Observatory’s Coordinator at the Beirut Urban Lab. He holds a Master’s degree in Architecture, an MSc. Urban Economic Development and a double master’s in Geopolitics and Public Administration. His research interests are urban disasters and resilience, economic policy, social vulnerabilities and gender inequalities. Before joining the Lab, Antoine has worked and studied in France, Lebanon, the USA, Vietnam, and the UK.
Christine Mady is Associate Professor in architecture, urban design, and urban planning at the Notre Dame University-Louaize. Her research covers public spaces with a focus on unstable contexts, specifically Beirut. She investigates public spaces’ role in spatial justice, social integration, everyday life and social practices, public health, and mobility. Within this frame she covers the evolution of public spaces, participatory and alternative approaches to their supply. Christine has published and presented her work in numerous international journals and conferences. She is a member of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), and the AESOP thematic group Public Spaces and Urban Cultures.

Ariella Masboungi is an architect and urban planner. She was “haute fonctionnaire” in charge of the “projet urbain” in France. She directed le Grand Prix de l’urbanisme and the Projet urbain workshops for the ministry in charge of sustainability. She studies topics such as “Energy and the projet urbain,” “Forgotten territories” and coordinates “5 to 7” on societal themes. She is the author of several books of which Le plaisir de l’urbanisme, published when she was granted the Grand Prix de l’urbanisme in 2016, and La ville pas chiante in 2021.

Dana Mazraani is an urban planner, architect, and researcher. At the Beirut Urban Lab, she is a research coordinator working on ways of repurposing public spaces and vacant properties in the city for shared use. Currently, her work focuses on Beirut’s post-blast recovery and involves the implementation of public space interventions. Her previous research covers inclusive design, urban informality, and the transformation of Beirut’s relationship to street and outdoor life. Dana holds a double master’s degree in international cooperation in urban development and planning from Université Grenoble Alpes and TU Darmstadt.

Soha Mneimneh is a research coordinator at the Beirut Urban Lab, where she works on financialization and its impacts on mortgage’s holders during crises, urban precarity, as well as housing, land, and property issues, particularly in relation to the conditions of return in the areas affected by the Beirut port blast. Soha is a member of the council of representatives at the Order of Engineers and Architects of Beirut, and is of committees working on building law amendments, municipalities, and Lebanon’s master plan. She holds a Master’s in Urban Planning and Policy (2019) from the American University of Beirut and a Master’s in Architecture (2014) from the Lebanese University.

Robert Saliba is Adjunct Professor of Architecture, Urban Design, and Planning at the American University of Beirut. He has conducted extensive research on Beirut’s historic formation and postwar reconstruction. He is the editor of Urban Design in the Arab World: Re-conceptualizing Boundaries (Ashgate, 2015), and the author of Beyrouth architectures: aux sources de la modernité’ (Parenthèses, 2009); He coordinated the graduate program in Urban Planning and Policy and Urban Design at AUB between 2008 and 2011 and was a visiting professor in urban design at the Department of Architecture, Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. He has served as a land use consultant with the World Bank and UN-Habitat on the state of the environment in Lebanon and previously worked as an urban design consultant and a city planning associate at the Community Redevelopment Agency in Los Angeles, California.

Isabela Serhan is an architect and urban researcher. Her work at Beirut Urban Lab includes projects that contribute to reclaiming Beirut’s coast for the public and advocating for innovative housing strategies in the city. She is currently developing her research on housing production into an urban planning thesis project within the MUPP/MUD graduate program at the department of Architecture and Design (ArD) at the American University of Beirut.

Jad Tabet is the former President of the Lebanese Federation of Engineers and Architects (2017-2021) and of the Organization of Arab Architects (2017-2020). He is an architect and planner working between Beirut (Lebanon) and Paris (France). As a widely recognized advocate of heritage preservation, Tabet has been appointed in 2019 as member of the High Level Reflection Group for UNESCO Strategic Transformation. He was also member of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee (2001-2005) and (2013-2017). His practice extends over several dimensions of design and research, spanning across the fields of historic urban landscapes, public space design, the rehabilitation and revitalization of traditional urban fabrics, the development of strategies for sustainable community growth as well as social housing and public facilities. Tabet is the author of several academic publications on the relationship between heritage and modernity, on war and reconstruction, and numerous op-eds and positions advocating for the protection of urban-shared spaces in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Libya. He taught at the American University of Beirut, the Lebanese University and the School of Architecture of Paris-Belleville. He also served as distinguished Faculty at the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA-Sciences Po Paris). Tabet’s distinguished practice in the field has earned him numerous awards, notably the Distinguished Alumni Award in Architecture delivered by the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture-American University of Beirut in 2003 and the Medal of the French Académie d’Architecture and the National Council of French Architects in 2014.

Batoul Yassine is an urban designer and architect. She is a research coordinator at the Beirut Urban Lab. Her research focuses on forced displacement, informality and urban recovery in post-conflict and crises’ sites. She is interested in residual private/public spaces and their appropriation by different communities. She holds a Master’s in Urban Design from the American University of Beirut and a Master’s in Architecture from the Lebanese University.

Serge Yazigi is an architect and urban planner, and a consultant in sustainable development, urban renewal, land-use planning, and strategic planning in Lebanon as well as the region. In 2005, Yazigi founded Yazigi Atelier, a planning, architecture, and design consultancy firm from which he conducts most of his work. In addition, between 1999-2009, Yazigi has acted as a senior external consultant for Dar Al Hadassah Taleb & partners on all their architectural and planning projects in Lebanon and the region. Yazigi’s research interests led him to found in 2007 Majal, an Academic Urban Observatory at ALBA based at the University of Balamand, which aims to facilitate research and assist localities in the formulation of adapted development strategies. Through Majal, Yazigi has directed numerous publications addressing particularly planning law and regulations. Yazigi has taught courses in architecture and planning at ALBA (University of Balamand), the Lebanese University, the Université Saint Joseph and the American University of Beirut where he collaborates as well on several projects with the Beirut Urban Lab. Yazigi holds a PhD in Contemporary History in the field of urban renewal, from the University of Bordeaux.

Abir Zaatari is an urban planning researcher and architect. Abir works as a research coordinator at the Beirut Urban Lab, where she investigates urban housing and land policies and how they influence different modes of housing provision and acquisition. Her current research projects are focused on Beirut’s housing rental market(s) and on examining potential ways for improving land management policies in Lebanon, starting with the Betterment taxation principle. Abir received her Bachelor’s in Architecture and Master’s in Urban Planning and Policy from the American University of Beirut.