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Nasser Rabbat and Deen Sharp Discuss "Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria"
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Mon, Sep 8, 2025
7 PM – 8 PM (GMT+3)
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The discussion will be moderated by Aya Musmar, assistant professor of humanities at AUC, who will guide the conversation through the book’s key themes and their broader implications for Syria’s future. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A session with the editors.
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About the book:
In 2011, emboldened by the Arab Spring, the Syrians rose up against their government. The Syrian regime used violence to suppress the protests, so that what began as pro-democracy protests eventually morphed into a civil war with heavy outside intervention. Today, the Assad regime has fallen, but large parts of the country lie in ruins, millions of Syrians are displaced, and the economy is in freefall. Reconstruction as Violence delves into the complex interplay of post-conflict reconstruction in Syria, challenging the traditionally held dichotomy between the end of violence and the commencement of rebuilding. The contributors to this volume—architects, urbanists, geographers, and historians—illustrate how reconstruction often extends the dynamics of conflict into the urban and social realms, suggesting that the built environment becomes a battleground for further violence. They emphasize the importance of acknowledging the historical, economic, societal, legal, and bureaucratic contexts that shape reconstruction efforts.
You can pre-order your copy of Reconstruction as Violence in Assad's Syria from major bookstores and online book retailers globally or one of the following links:
UK: bit.ly/RAVIAS-UK
North America: bit.ly/RAVIAS-NA
Egypt: bit.ly/4ovydae
Speakers
Nasser Rabbat
Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture
MIT
Nasser Rabbat is the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT. His interests include Islamic architecture, urban history, heritage studies, Arab history, contemporary Islamic art, and post-colonial criticism. He has published numerous articles and several books on topics ranging from Mamluk architecture to Antique Syria, nineteenth-century Cairo, Orientalism, and urbicide. His most recent books are ‘Imarat al-Mudun al-Mayyita (The Architecture of the Dead Cities, 2018), and an online book, The Destruction of Cultural Heritage: From Napoléon to ISIS, co-edited with Pamela Karimi (2016). His book on the great fifteenth century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi came out in late 2022.
Deen Sharp
Visiting fellow at the Department of Geography and Environment
London School of Economics and Political Science
Deen Sharp is a visiting fellow at the Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics and Political Science. He was formerly a fellow at the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the co-editor of Beyond the Square: Urbanism and the Arab Uprisings (Urban Research, 2016) and Open Gaza: Architectures of Hope (American University in Cairo Press, 2021). He has written for a number of publications, including, Jadaliyya, Portal 9, MERIP, Arab Studies Journal, and The Guardian. He has worked for several UN agencies, including UNDP and UN-Habitat, governments and international NGOs.
Aya Musmar
Assistant professor of architectural humanities
The American University in Cairo
Aya Musmar is a Jordanian-Palestinian academic and educator based between Cairo and Amman. Her research navigates the politics of displacement, pedagogy, and aesthetics across urban and extraterritorial geographies, with a focus on how spaces of loss, exile, and resistance shape architectural and visual cultures. Her current work examines the spectral presences of diasporic belongings, the ethical entanglements of teaching in the wake of the catastrophe, and the insurgent aesthetics that emerge from refugee camps.
Aya’s recent publications include Diasporic Spectres: Transposing the Hyphen in Palestinian-Jordanian (forthcoming in Journal of Architecture and Culture) and The Sacred Inside photo essay in the Architectures of Resistance book. She is the leading editor of the “Infidelities” issue of the Journal of Architectural Education (JAE).
For the year 2023/2024, Aya was the ACSA/JAE fellow for her research, “The Refugee Camp as an Apolitical Space (?)”. She founded The Studio of the Extraterritorial, a regional hybrid hub working across the university and the public art space to cultivate critical conversations on geopolitics, borders, territories, and spaces of exception.