Dr Aya Nassar

(email at aya.m.nassar@durham.ac.uk)

I am interested in elemental geography, the materiality of cities, memory, infrastructure, fragments of space and storytelling the politics of the postcolony. More recently, these interests revolve around geopoetics, aesthetics, ruination and attachements to postcolonial sovereignty. 

I hold a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Warwick. So far, my research has focused primarily on Cairo and, sometimes, Coventry. Methodologically, I work with archives, and I am interested in the city as archive as well living with incomplete and truncated research. I am also interested in autoethnography, narrative writing and storytelling.

Research Groups

Department of Geography

• Economy & Culture
• Geographies of Life

Selected Publications

Authored book

• Nieuwenhuis, Marijn, Nassar, Aya & Leach, Carol (2019). Spon End: A Local Guide. Independent Publishing Network.

Journal Article

• Nassar,Aya (2021). Geopoetics: Storytelling against mastery [Commentary]. Dialogues in Human Geography 11(1): 27-30.
• Nieuwenhuis, Marijn & Nassar, Aya (2020). Losing Ground: A Collection of HOles. Emotion, Space and Society 36: 100677.
• Nassar, Aya (2020). To stand by the ruins of a revolutionary city. International Journal of Middle East Studies 52(3): 510-515.
• Perlin, Jenny, Nieuwenhuis, Marijn & Nassar, Aya (2019). Feeling (y)our way in the dark: An interview with Jenny Perlin. Emotion, Space and Society 33: 100596.
• Nassar, Aya (2019). Staging the State: Commemoration, Urban Space and the National Symbolic Order in 1970s Cairo. Middle East Critique 28(3): 321.
• Nieuwenhuis, Marijn & Nassar, Aya (2018). Dust: perfect circularity. Cultural Geographies 25(3): 501-507.
• Nassar, Aya (2018). Where the dust settles: fieldwork, subjectivity and materiality in Cairo. Contemporary Social Science 13(3-4): 412.
• Nassar, Aya (2014). ‘Being’ in Al-Azhar Park: Public Spaces in Cairo. The Open Urban Studies Journal 6: 65-74.

Book review

• Nassar, Aya (2021). Yahia Shawkat 2020: Egypt's Housing Crisis: The Shaping of Urban Space. Cairo/New York: The American University in Cairo Press. IJURR
• Nassar, Aya (2020). Endurance in the city victorious (Book review forum: Improvised Lives: Rhythms of Endurance in an Urban South). Dialogues in Human Geography 10(1): 78-80.
• Nassar, Aya (2020). Social Housing in the Middle East: Architecture, Urban Development, and Transnational Modernity. International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) 52(3): 603-604.
• Nassar, Aya (2017). Amale Andraos, Nora Akawi and Caitlin Blanchfield (eds.) 2016: The Arab City: Architecture and Representation New York: Columbia Books on Architecture and the City, Columbia University Press. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41(2): 376-378.
• Nassar, Aya (2017). Spatial Politics of the Sculptural: Art, Capitalism and Urban Space, Euyoung Hong, Rowman & Littlefield International, London and New York (2016), III and 187 pp. $41.95 paperback. ISBN 978-1-78348-760-8. Emotion, Space and Society 24: 23-24.

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Nieuwenhuis, Marijn & Nassar,Aya (2018). (Porous cities: Coventry through 1O Holes). (4).
• Nassar, Aya (2018). Establishing a Niche for Urban Rights: Activism, Urbanism, and the City.
• Nassar, Aya (2017). City Politics: Walking, Bodies and Space. 1(2): 7-9.
• Nassar, Aya (2017). To Walk the World: Reflections on Not Attending the International Studies Association Convention.
• Nassar, Aya (2011). The symbolism of Tahrir Square (In Arabic with an English translation).

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