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Nezar AlSayyad: "Virtual Uprising" (Sep 24)

Welcome to the KTH School of Architecture public Thursdays' programme and an open guest lecture by Nezar Alsayyad, Professor of Architecture, Planning, Urban Design and Urban History at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. Subtitled "Tahrir Square, Social Media and the Return of Public Space", the talk analyzes the geography of uprisings in the so-called “Arab spring” with a focus on the relationship between virtual and physical geographies.

Time: Thu 2015-09-24 18.00

Location: New KTH School of Architecture, Osquars backe 5, Stockholm (T-bana 'Tekniska Högskolan')

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This talk analyzes the geography of uprisings in the so-called “Arab spring” with a focus on the relationship between virtual and physical geographies. It is concerned with the spatial and temporal dimensions of the urban uprisings with a particular attention to the interwoven relationship between social media that organize political gatherings and communicate political messages; the practices of protest in urban space; and the global and national media coverage of the events in an attempt to enhance our understanding of social movements in the 21st Century. Tahrir Square, a very complex urban space with a particular architectural history in Cairo, is used a main case study.  The protest movement's use of this urban space is interrogated, and from this emerges the finding that the reciprocal interactions between social media, urban space, and traditional media coverage, does not simply reproduce the relations between these actors, but it also transforms them incrementally.

NEZAR ALSAYYAD
is a  Professor of Architecture, City Planning, Urban Design, and Urban History at UC Berkeley .  He is Co-Chair of the Middle Eastern Studies Undergraduate Major (MES), Head Graduate Advisor for the M.A in International & Area Studies Graduate Program, and a member of the Global Metropolitan Studies Group (GMS). For almost two decades AlSayyad also chaired the  Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Berkeley  leading it to International standing.

Educated as an architect, planner, urban designer and historian, AlSayyad is principally an urbanist whose specialty is the study of cities, their urban spaces, their social practices and their economic realities. As a scholar, AlSayyad has authored and edited several books on colonialism, identity, Islamic architecture, tourism, tradition, urbanism, urban design, urban history, urban informality, and virtuality. He has also produced and co-directed two public television video documentaries: “Virtual Cairo” and “At Home with Mother Earth.” Among his numerous grants are those received from the U.S. Department of Education, NEA—Design Arts Program, Getty Grant Program, the Graham Foundation, the SSRC, and a Guggenheim fellowship. His awards include the Beit AlQuran Medal from Bahrain, the Pioneer American Society Book Award, the American Institute of Architects Education Honors, and the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest honor the University of California bestows on its faculty.

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