I am a Leverhulme postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Geography at Durham University and my research focuses on spatial (in)justice and urban memory politics. My upcoming book examines the urban resistance of displaced populations within transcultural landscapes. I completed my PhD at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research in the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge, supervised by Dr Maximilian Sternberg.
In this brief commentary, we illuminate connections between histories and geographies of spatial ... more In this brief commentary, we illuminate connections between histories and geographies of spatial violence that Palestinians continue to endure. Our aim is to unpack how the deliberate destruction of buildings and systematic spatial annihilation through warfare corresponds with “slower” settler-colonial violence directed at people and places, nature, and the built environment.
This article maps two grids of city walking tours, conceptualizing them as expressions of transcu... more This article maps two grids of city walking tours, conceptualizing them as expressions of transcultural memory activism. The first are walking tours in Berlin, guided by Syrian refugees, which use memorials of local traumatic history to testify to the refugees' current traumas. The second are walking tours in an impoverished neighbourhood of south Tel Aviv, that inter-weave African asylum seekers' travelling memories as part of the story of those streets. Analysing these tours, the article probes how references to histories of urban migration and traumatic legacies might inform contemporary political projects asserting the rights of refugees, and redefine the parameters of urban belonging. It therefore proposes a dual theoretical contribution: (1) advancing the transcultural turn in memory studies by paying greater attention to the materiality and performativity of transcultural memory and (2) enhancing research on the agency of refugees by demonstrating how they affect and expand the public memory of the contested national and urban contexts in which they travel or inhabit.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2024
The article examines the Muslim community’s struggle to maintain their cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaf... more The article examines the Muslim community’s struggle to maintain their cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and highlights a broader geo-temporal interpretation of the indigenous right-to-the-city. We analyse a succession of mobilizations against sales and demolitions of Muslim cemeteries across the city since the 1950s and investigate how activists recently gained tangible achievements by framing their protest as an urban citizenship mobilization. We show that by utilizing creative spatial performances, applying to municipal governance and stressing their right to use and produce urban space, to participate, and to have their local heritage acknowledged and commemorated, they invoked and reinterpreted right-to-the-city ideas. Their struggle also expanded this agenda, as they did not focus on their living area, but rather advanced claims related to the full city space and its history, and to the customary view of their spaces as 'terra nullius'. In analysing their struggle, we thus contribute to the right-to-the-city literature and agenda, highlight the right for commemoration as part of right to live in the city as equal citizens, and address the promise this case presents for minority ethnic politics.
Urban displacement is receiving growing visibility within urban studies. However, most literature... more Urban displacement is receiving growing visibility within urban studies. However, most literature centres on the logic of late capitalism and tends to neglect colonial history and local resistance to displacement. This paper takes an alternative path: it relates (a) the history of colonialism and ethnic cleansing of the city of Jaffa with (b) the present-day gentrification and displacement caused by neoliberal urbanism. To unpack this entanglement, the article focuses on political city walking tours led by Inter nally Displaced Palestinians in Jaffa, alongside a broader repertoire of urban subaltern tactics to reclaim it-ranging from community meetings to more overtly politicised acts of protest and initiatives to disrupt gentrification. The article therefore advances debates on urban displacement and urban citizenship mobilisation through the lens of post colonial theories, and by adopting a participatory interdisciplinary approach-from a novel perspective that centres local knowledge, lived experiences, and grassroots activism.
This article studies the entanglement of urban activism and educational tourism, considering its ... more This article studies the entanglement of urban activism and educational tourism, considering its constraints and potential for political agency, as manifested in guided walking tours of south Tel Aviv. Through an analysis of the historical and geographical context of south Tel Aviv, the article emphasises the necessity of a spatial analysis for unpacking the politics of racial fear and the reception of asylum seekers. In parallel, the article emphasises the connections between seemingly distinct conflicts, cultures, and geographies, which need to be better understood in urban studies. It further stresses the need for innovative methodologies to unpack strategies of political participation, belonging, and agency in cities shaped by the exchange and flow between multiple geographies and by the looming presence of the past.
Though forced displacement is prominent within academic research, as well as within public, polit... more Though forced displacement is prominent within academic research, as well as within public, political, and media debates, all too often the image of forcibly displaced persons is that of voiceless victims and the structural causes behind their trauma are overlooked. The article works to disrupt this problematic visualization through an original study of walking tours offered by refugees and internally displaced persons in Berlin and Jaffa. It utilises walking as the method and theme of research, mapping the potential of walking as a collaborative pedagogy and a subaltern design tactic to claim political participation and belonging in the city. Through this, the article offers a new analytical perspective concerning the agency of discalced persons to navigate the politics of their (im)mobility and (in)visibility. The main argument is that these guided tours or 'autotopographies' of forced displacement hold the political capacity to alter the public visibility of displaced people, but also to illuminate aspects that are overlooked or erased within the city's official display of memory. The article therefore advances debates about the politics of urban space and heritage sites and contributes to research which seeks to theorize the multiple geo-temporal colonial entanglement of forced displacement regimes.
Ash Amin, Massimo De Angelis, Shannon Mattern, and Richard Sennett in conversation with Michal Hu... more Ash Amin, Massimo De Angelis, Shannon Mattern, and Richard Sennett in conversation with Michal Huss and Konstantinos Pittas
Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement, 2020
This chapter examines how refugee tour guides in Berlin use memorials to mediate and represent th... more This chapter examines how refugee tour guides in Berlin use memorials to mediate and represent the trails of collective memory from other places and times, and place themselves within the ongoing history of movement and migration inherent to Berlin. The chapter argues that in the context of Germany’s ambivalent hospitality towards refugees, these tours act as a transcultural memory activism that allows refugees to interlace their memories into the host society’s shared collective memory to negotiate their inclusion. This memory activism deploys memory mixing to open up a space of recognition and interchange, offer potentials of hybridity, and assign new meanings to dominant memory narratives. Hence, the tours also suggest the potential of opening up memorials as a resource for protesting suffering and injustices and disrupting notions of cultural purity.
The ‘mapping procedure’ is a routine military operation of the
Israeli Army in which soldiers map... more The ‘mapping procedure’ is a routine military operation of the Israeli Army in which soldiers map the houses of civilians, collect personal details of family members or take a photograph of the family. The ‘Information’ collected in the ‘mapping procedure’ is not archived or passed to the intelligence services following the operation. As the documentation produced is not collected, the central question of this paper concerns how the ‘mapping procedure’ functions as a practice of governing and how this relates to Israeli colonial identity. The paper contributes to the understanding of the implications of maps within colonialism, and it examines mapping as a deterritorialized performance that contributes to the production of identity. This paper suggests three readings of the ‘mapping procedure’. Firstly, as a performative governing tool that implements the hierarchical categorization of people into occupiers and occupied; colonized and colonizers. Secondly, the soldiers that produce the maps are considered as policing forces of a colonial ideology that repeats and mimics British colonialism. Finally, the ‘mapping procedure’ is framed as a tool to refine and redraw the ethnic Jewish-Arabic binary that is needed to maintain the precarious Israeli colonial identity.
Exhibited in the exhibition by the collective #TALKTOEACHOTHER
The work aims to de-construct the... more Exhibited in the exhibition by the collective #TALKTOEACHOTHER
The work aims to de-construct the canonical image of war as a heroic act of patriotism. By using personal accounts from Israeli citizens, I draws attention to the unrepresented elements of the geo-political conflict. Fearless Speech recounts the testimonies of people who have experienced the war between Israel and Palestine first-hand, creating a juxtaposition between the government language used by state officials and the memories of the people whose daily lives are affected. Using art as a form of communication and commemoration, Fearless Speech highlights internal struggle, psychological trauma, as well as national identity. Inspired by a series of lectures by Foucault, the title of this work refers to parrhesia, an ancient Greek term meaning free and fearless speech. The work consists of six testimonies about the war, printed on large chiffon fabrics. For example: a mother who allows her son to return to fight in Gaza after he was injured, a soldier who killed someone in Gaza, my grandfather who refused to take part in a battle in which all his friends died and so on. The white fabrics can be envisioned as a flag or burial garments
A public discussion between Ash Amin (University of Cambridge), Massimo De Angelis (University of... more A public discussion between Ash Amin (University of Cambridge), Massimo De Angelis (University of East London), Shannon Mattern (The New School), and Richard Sennett (Chair, Council on Urban Initiatives, United Nations Habitat) with Michal Huss (University of Cambridge) and Konstantinos Pittas (University of Cambridge) that interrogates the relevance of the commons in an age of digital transformation, globalisation, mounting inequalities, racial violence, and a global pandemic. The central aim was to investigate whether this new reality – a time of enforced distance and mass protests for social justice – can become the basis for new practices of commoning, from the socialisation of goods, healthcare, and digital content, to radical forms of collaboration, collective care, and community solidarity. The speakers discuss the potentialities and constraints of the current situation, exploring ways in which physical spaces can become “common”, against the backdrop of privatisation, the market imperative of global capitalism, and the proliferation of virtual spaces.
In this brief commentary, we illuminate connections between histories and geographies of spatial ... more In this brief commentary, we illuminate connections between histories and geographies of spatial violence that Palestinians continue to endure. Our aim is to unpack how the deliberate destruction of buildings and systematic spatial annihilation through warfare corresponds with “slower” settler-colonial violence directed at people and places, nature, and the built environment.
This article maps two grids of city walking tours, conceptualizing them as expressions of transcu... more This article maps two grids of city walking tours, conceptualizing them as expressions of transcultural memory activism. The first are walking tours in Berlin, guided by Syrian refugees, which use memorials of local traumatic history to testify to the refugees' current traumas. The second are walking tours in an impoverished neighbourhood of south Tel Aviv, that inter-weave African asylum seekers' travelling memories as part of the story of those streets. Analysing these tours, the article probes how references to histories of urban migration and traumatic legacies might inform contemporary political projects asserting the rights of refugees, and redefine the parameters of urban belonging. It therefore proposes a dual theoretical contribution: (1) advancing the transcultural turn in memory studies by paying greater attention to the materiality and performativity of transcultural memory and (2) enhancing research on the agency of refugees by demonstrating how they affect and expand the public memory of the contested national and urban contexts in which they travel or inhabit.
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 2024
The article examines the Muslim community’s struggle to maintain their cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaf... more The article examines the Muslim community’s struggle to maintain their cemeteries in Tel Aviv-Jaffa, and highlights a broader geo-temporal interpretation of the indigenous right-to-the-city. We analyse a succession of mobilizations against sales and demolitions of Muslim cemeteries across the city since the 1950s and investigate how activists recently gained tangible achievements by framing their protest as an urban citizenship mobilization. We show that by utilizing creative spatial performances, applying to municipal governance and stressing their right to use and produce urban space, to participate, and to have their local heritage acknowledged and commemorated, they invoked and reinterpreted right-to-the-city ideas. Their struggle also expanded this agenda, as they did not focus on their living area, but rather advanced claims related to the full city space and its history, and to the customary view of their spaces as 'terra nullius'. In analysing their struggle, we thus contribute to the right-to-the-city literature and agenda, highlight the right for commemoration as part of right to live in the city as equal citizens, and address the promise this case presents for minority ethnic politics.
Urban displacement is receiving growing visibility within urban studies. However, most literature... more Urban displacement is receiving growing visibility within urban studies. However, most literature centres on the logic of late capitalism and tends to neglect colonial history and local resistance to displacement. This paper takes an alternative path: it relates (a) the history of colonialism and ethnic cleansing of the city of Jaffa with (b) the present-day gentrification and displacement caused by neoliberal urbanism. To unpack this entanglement, the article focuses on political city walking tours led by Inter nally Displaced Palestinians in Jaffa, alongside a broader repertoire of urban subaltern tactics to reclaim it-ranging from community meetings to more overtly politicised acts of protest and initiatives to disrupt gentrification. The article therefore advances debates on urban displacement and urban citizenship mobilisation through the lens of post colonial theories, and by adopting a participatory interdisciplinary approach-from a novel perspective that centres local knowledge, lived experiences, and grassroots activism.
This article studies the entanglement of urban activism and educational tourism, considering its ... more This article studies the entanglement of urban activism and educational tourism, considering its constraints and potential for political agency, as manifested in guided walking tours of south Tel Aviv. Through an analysis of the historical and geographical context of south Tel Aviv, the article emphasises the necessity of a spatial analysis for unpacking the politics of racial fear and the reception of asylum seekers. In parallel, the article emphasises the connections between seemingly distinct conflicts, cultures, and geographies, which need to be better understood in urban studies. It further stresses the need for innovative methodologies to unpack strategies of political participation, belonging, and agency in cities shaped by the exchange and flow between multiple geographies and by the looming presence of the past.
Though forced displacement is prominent within academic research, as well as within public, polit... more Though forced displacement is prominent within academic research, as well as within public, political, and media debates, all too often the image of forcibly displaced persons is that of voiceless victims and the structural causes behind their trauma are overlooked. The article works to disrupt this problematic visualization through an original study of walking tours offered by refugees and internally displaced persons in Berlin and Jaffa. It utilises walking as the method and theme of research, mapping the potential of walking as a collaborative pedagogy and a subaltern design tactic to claim political participation and belonging in the city. Through this, the article offers a new analytical perspective concerning the agency of discalced persons to navigate the politics of their (im)mobility and (in)visibility. The main argument is that these guided tours or 'autotopographies' of forced displacement hold the political capacity to alter the public visibility of displaced people, but also to illuminate aspects that are overlooked or erased within the city's official display of memory. The article therefore advances debates about the politics of urban space and heritage sites and contributes to research which seeks to theorize the multiple geo-temporal colonial entanglement of forced displacement regimes.
Ash Amin, Massimo De Angelis, Shannon Mattern, and Richard Sennett in conversation with Michal Hu... more Ash Amin, Massimo De Angelis, Shannon Mattern, and Richard Sennett in conversation with Michal Huss and Konstantinos Pittas
Public Memory in the Context of Transnational Migration and Displacement, 2020
This chapter examines how refugee tour guides in Berlin use memorials to mediate and represent th... more This chapter examines how refugee tour guides in Berlin use memorials to mediate and represent the trails of collective memory from other places and times, and place themselves within the ongoing history of movement and migration inherent to Berlin. The chapter argues that in the context of Germany’s ambivalent hospitality towards refugees, these tours act as a transcultural memory activism that allows refugees to interlace their memories into the host society’s shared collective memory to negotiate their inclusion. This memory activism deploys memory mixing to open up a space of recognition and interchange, offer potentials of hybridity, and assign new meanings to dominant memory narratives. Hence, the tours also suggest the potential of opening up memorials as a resource for protesting suffering and injustices and disrupting notions of cultural purity.
The ‘mapping procedure’ is a routine military operation of the
Israeli Army in which soldiers map... more The ‘mapping procedure’ is a routine military operation of the Israeli Army in which soldiers map the houses of civilians, collect personal details of family members or take a photograph of the family. The ‘Information’ collected in the ‘mapping procedure’ is not archived or passed to the intelligence services following the operation. As the documentation produced is not collected, the central question of this paper concerns how the ‘mapping procedure’ functions as a practice of governing and how this relates to Israeli colonial identity. The paper contributes to the understanding of the implications of maps within colonialism, and it examines mapping as a deterritorialized performance that contributes to the production of identity. This paper suggests three readings of the ‘mapping procedure’. Firstly, as a performative governing tool that implements the hierarchical categorization of people into occupiers and occupied; colonized and colonizers. Secondly, the soldiers that produce the maps are considered as policing forces of a colonial ideology that repeats and mimics British colonialism. Finally, the ‘mapping procedure’ is framed as a tool to refine and redraw the ethnic Jewish-Arabic binary that is needed to maintain the precarious Israeli colonial identity.
Exhibited in the exhibition by the collective #TALKTOEACHOTHER
The work aims to de-construct the... more Exhibited in the exhibition by the collective #TALKTOEACHOTHER
The work aims to de-construct the canonical image of war as a heroic act of patriotism. By using personal accounts from Israeli citizens, I draws attention to the unrepresented elements of the geo-political conflict. Fearless Speech recounts the testimonies of people who have experienced the war between Israel and Palestine first-hand, creating a juxtaposition between the government language used by state officials and the memories of the people whose daily lives are affected. Using art as a form of communication and commemoration, Fearless Speech highlights internal struggle, psychological trauma, as well as national identity. Inspired by a series of lectures by Foucault, the title of this work refers to parrhesia, an ancient Greek term meaning free and fearless speech. The work consists of six testimonies about the war, printed on large chiffon fabrics. For example: a mother who allows her son to return to fight in Gaza after he was injured, a soldier who killed someone in Gaza, my grandfather who refused to take part in a battle in which all his friends died and so on. The white fabrics can be envisioned as a flag or burial garments
A public discussion between Ash Amin (University of Cambridge), Massimo De Angelis (University of... more A public discussion between Ash Amin (University of Cambridge), Massimo De Angelis (University of East London), Shannon Mattern (The New School), and Richard Sennett (Chair, Council on Urban Initiatives, United Nations Habitat) with Michal Huss (University of Cambridge) and Konstantinos Pittas (University of Cambridge) that interrogates the relevance of the commons in an age of digital transformation, globalisation, mounting inequalities, racial violence, and a global pandemic. The central aim was to investigate whether this new reality – a time of enforced distance and mass protests for social justice – can become the basis for new practices of commoning, from the socialisation of goods, healthcare, and digital content, to radical forms of collaboration, collective care, and community solidarity. The speakers discuss the potentialities and constraints of the current situation, exploring ways in which physical spaces can become “common”, against the backdrop of privatisation, the market imperative of global capitalism, and the proliferation of virtual spaces.
Uploads
Israeli Army in which soldiers map the houses of civilians,
collect personal details of family members or take a photograph
of the family. The ‘Information’ collected in the ‘mapping
procedure’ is not archived or passed to the intelligence
services following the operation. As the documentation produced
is not collected, the central question of this paper
concerns how the ‘mapping procedure’ functions as a practice
of governing and how this relates to Israeli colonial identity.
The paper contributes to the understanding of the implications
of maps within colonialism, and it examines mapping as a deterritorialized
performance that contributes to the production
of identity. This paper suggests three readings of the ‘mapping
procedure’. Firstly, as a performative governing tool that implements
the hierarchical categorization of people into occupiers
and occupied; colonized and colonizers. Secondly, the soldiers
that produce the maps are considered as policing forces of a
colonial ideology that repeats and mimics British colonialism.
Finally, the ‘mapping procedure’ is framed as a tool to refine
and redraw the ethnic Jewish-Arabic binary that is needed to
maintain the precarious Israeli colonial identity.
The work aims to de-construct the canonical image of war as a heroic act of patriotism. By using personal accounts from Israeli citizens, I draws attention to the unrepresented elements of the geo-political conflict. Fearless Speech recounts the testimonies of people who have experienced the war between Israel and Palestine first-hand, creating a juxtaposition between the government language used by state officials and the memories of the people whose daily lives are affected. Using art as a form of communication and commemoration, Fearless Speech highlights internal struggle, psychological trauma, as well as national identity. Inspired by a series of lectures by Foucault, the title of this work refers to parrhesia, an ancient Greek term meaning free and fearless speech. The work consists of six testimonies about the war, printed on large chiffon fabrics. For example: a mother who allows her son to return to fight in Gaza after he was injured, a soldier who killed someone in Gaza, my grandfather who refused to take part in a battle in which all his friends died and so on. The white fabrics can be envisioned as a flag or burial garments
Israeli Army in which soldiers map the houses of civilians,
collect personal details of family members or take a photograph
of the family. The ‘Information’ collected in the ‘mapping
procedure’ is not archived or passed to the intelligence
services following the operation. As the documentation produced
is not collected, the central question of this paper
concerns how the ‘mapping procedure’ functions as a practice
of governing and how this relates to Israeli colonial identity.
The paper contributes to the understanding of the implications
of maps within colonialism, and it examines mapping as a deterritorialized
performance that contributes to the production
of identity. This paper suggests three readings of the ‘mapping
procedure’. Firstly, as a performative governing tool that implements
the hierarchical categorization of people into occupiers
and occupied; colonized and colonizers. Secondly, the soldiers
that produce the maps are considered as policing forces of a
colonial ideology that repeats and mimics British colonialism.
Finally, the ‘mapping procedure’ is framed as a tool to refine
and redraw the ethnic Jewish-Arabic binary that is needed to
maintain the precarious Israeli colonial identity.
The work aims to de-construct the canonical image of war as a heroic act of patriotism. By using personal accounts from Israeli citizens, I draws attention to the unrepresented elements of the geo-political conflict. Fearless Speech recounts the testimonies of people who have experienced the war between Israel and Palestine first-hand, creating a juxtaposition between the government language used by state officials and the memories of the people whose daily lives are affected. Using art as a form of communication and commemoration, Fearless Speech highlights internal struggle, psychological trauma, as well as national identity. Inspired by a series of lectures by Foucault, the title of this work refers to parrhesia, an ancient Greek term meaning free and fearless speech. The work consists of six testimonies about the war, printed on large chiffon fabrics. For example: a mother who allows her son to return to fight in Gaza after he was injured, a soldier who killed someone in Gaza, my grandfather who refused to take part in a battle in which all his friends died and so on. The white fabrics can be envisioned as a flag or burial garments