Hearing Palestine - Spatial Encounters: Aerial Imagery, Mapping & Palestine’s Colonial Landscape

THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED, as the speaker, Nadi Abusaada has pulled out of the event because he feels compelled to honour the boycott of UofT that the Canadian Association of University Teachers has called for recently. Please see the full notice here: https://mailchi.mp/38f3293fe42e/hp-cancellation-apr29

Based on his archival research, in this talk, Nadi Abusaada will shed light on how colonial perspectives of Palestine have been critically shaped by technologies of flight—as well as the narrow modes of sight that they engender—in ways that often lead to the erasure of the Palestinian people and their material environments.

Nadi Abusaada is a PhD Candidate in Architecture, and a Cambridge Trust Scholar, at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research (UCR) in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. He is also the Co-founder of Arab Urbanism.

Nadi's doctoral research examines the history of urban transformation in modern Palestine, in relation to the cities of the Arab Mediterranean, through the advent of new notions and practices of civic governance, urban planning, and architecture in the late 19th and early 20th century. His work focuses on the role of local actors in shaping these processes in their cities while working within the confines of the late Ottoman and British imperial regimes.

Nadi holds an M.Phil. (Distinction) in Architecture and Urban Studies from the University of Cambridge, and an Honours B.A. (High Distinction) with a double major in Architecture and Urban Studies and a minor in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from the University of Toronto.