Biography
Dena started her PhD in Architecture in October 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Wendy Pullan. She is a Gates Cambridge Scholar. Her research focuses on the materialisation of revolution in the city of Tunis. At Cambridge, she supervises the course Divided Cities, co-convened City Seminar (2017-2018), and co-edited Scroope 27: Cambridge Architecture Journal.
Dena has worked in architecture, planning and higher education in New York, London, Palestine and Doha. Prior to starting her PhD, Dena was part of the project team to establish the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, an Arab academic and research institute in the social sciences and humanities.
In 2011 Dena co-founded arenaofspeculation.org a collective platform for exposing, confronting and subverting the dominant structures of spatial power in Israel-Palestine. She is currently a Policy Advisor to Al Shabaka - The Palestinian Policy Network.
She holds an MSc in Urban Development Planning from University College London and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Texas at Austin.
Research
- urban citizenship
- postcolonial urban theory
- cultural studies
- Arab cities
Publications
2017, with A. Ahmadi, “Scaling down planning in Doha towards the neighborhood and its public realm”, QScience Connect, Shaping Qatar’s Sustainable Built Environment 2017:qgbc.2.
2015, “Embodying Masculinity in a Cairene Neighborhood” [Review of the book Live and Die Like a Man: Gender Dynamics in Urban Egypt by F. Ghannam], Omran, Vol. 11, Winter, 185-186. (in Arabic)
2013, July 3, with A. Barclay et al., “Political Agency for Palestinian Return”, Al-Shabaka.
2013, "Advancing the Struggle for Urban Justice to the Assertion of Substantive Citizenship: Challenging Ethnocracy in Tel Aviv-Jaffa",DPU Working Paper No. 150, University College London.
2013, Feb. 14, with A. Barclay, “On strategies of spatial resistance in Palestine”, Cities in Conflict Series, openDemocracy.
2013, “‘Democratic Transition’, the City and its Citizens” [Review of the book Insurgent Citizenship by J. Holston], Omran, Vol. 3, Winter, 267-274. (in Arabic)
2012, Nov. 25, with A. Barclay, “Reframing Palestinian Return: A New Al-Shabaka Policy Circle”, Al-Shabaka.
2011, Sep. 22, with A. Barclay, “Roundtable on Occupation Law: Part of the Conflict or the Solution? Part III”, Jadaliyya.
