Owning [up to] the Urban: Mona Fawaz

M.U.D. Guest Speaker Series

Mona Fawaz, Beirut Urban Lab
Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at the American University of Beirut. Co-founder Beirut Urban Lab

Zoom. Refer to the email for the password.

Mona Fawaz is a Professor in Urban Studies and Planning at the American University of Beirut where she is also the co-founder of the Beirut Urban Lab, 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 and served as a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University. She has served on numerous national, regional and international juries, including the Aga Khan awards in 2019.

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.