Biography
Hanna Baumann is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at UCL's Institute for Global Prosperity (The Bartlett) researching the role of infrastructures in urban exclusion and participation of non-citizens. Hanna completed her PhD at the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research, where she was a Gates Scholar, in 2017. Her dissertation was entitled 'Navigating the neoliberal settler city: Palestinian mobility in Jerusalem between exclusion and incorporation'. She holds a BA (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) in Art History and History of the Middle East from Barnard College, Columbia University and an MSc (distinction) in Refugee and Forced Migration Studies from the University of Oxford. Prior to commencing her PhD, she worked on urban issues for UNESCO in India and Sri Lanka, as well as for the UN Special Rapporteurs on Cultural Rights and on the Right to Adequate Housing.
Hanna has co-convened the City Seminar at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and served as a supervisor for the BA Tripos (ARB/RIBA Part I) courses 'Urban Issues Today', 'Gardens and Landscape', as well as 'Divided Cities: The Politics of Mapping and Design', where she has also been a guest lecturer. She supervises and assesses dissertations in the BA, MPhil in Architecture and Urban Design (MAUD), and MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies (MAUS) programmes.
Research
- Urban inequality, exclusion and violence
- Mobility across borders and its restriction
- Infrastructure and the role of the non-human in the city
- (Post)colonial cities and landscapes
- Housing rights and evictions
- Politics of heritage and memory
Publications
Key publications:
- 'Moving, containing, displacing: the shipping container as shelter', Structures of Protection: Rethinking Refugee Shelter, ed. by Tom Scott-Smith, Oxford: Berghahn (forthcoming)
- 'Infrastructural Violence in Jerusalem: Exclusion, Incorporation and Resistance in a Contested “Cyborg City”', Reverberations: Violence across Time and Space, ed. by Yael Navaro, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (forthcoming)
- With Henrietta Moore, Nikolay Mintchev, Andrea Rigon, and Joana Dabaj: 'Towards a Shared Prosperity: Co-designing Solutions in Lebanon’s Spaces of Displacement' Journal of the British Academy 7 (2019): 109-135
- 'The intimacy of infrastructure: vulnerability and abjection in Palestinian Jerusalem through the work of Khaled Jarrar', Planned Violence: Post/colonial Urban Infrastructures and Literature, ed. by Elleke Boehmer, Dominic Davies. London: Palgrave (2018): 137-157
- 'The violence of infrastructural connectivity: Jerusalem’s light rail as a means of normalisation', META: Middle East – Topics & Arguments 10 (2018): 30-38
- 'Food as a network: utilising waste in cities of excess' Caravanserai Blog (August 2018)
- 'Enclaves, borders, and everyday movements: Palestinian marginal mobility in East Jerusalem', Cities 59 (2016): 173–182.
- 'In/visibility in transit: the everyday politics of urban transport' King's Review: Encounters (Autumn 2016): 44-52.
- Book review of ‘Urban Violence in the Middle East: Changing Cityscapes in the Transition from Empire to Nation State’, edited by Ulrike Freitag, Nelida Fuccaro, Claudia Ghrawi, and Nora Lafi, PERIPHERIE 36:141 special issue: The City as a Space of Conflict (in German, April 2016): 127-129.
- 'Bodies on the line: somatic risks and psychogeographies in urban exploration and Palestinian "infiltration"', The Funambulist Papers, Volume 2 (New York: Puctum Books, 2015)
- 'Israel’s Urban Policies an Unseen Driver of Jerusalem Tensions', World Policy Review (4 December 2014)
- 'Gaza’s Petrol Stations', Scroope: the Cambridge Architecture Journal 23 (July 2014)
- 'The heavy presence of the Jerusalem Light Rail: why Palestinian protesters attacked the tracks', openDemocracy (6 July 2014)
- '"Redet mit uns, nicht über uns" – Südafrikanische Slumbewohner treten für ihre Rechte ein' - Interview with S'bu Zikode, founder of the South African shackdwellers’ movement Abahlali baseMjondolo (in German), ad hoc 13 (November 2013): 7-8.
- Interview with Raquel Rolnik (in German), IP - Internationale Politik Special Issue (January 2013): 10-13
- 'Künstler im Gazastreifen: Kampf gegen die kulturelle Isolation' (in German), Zenith (July 2010)
Invited Talks:
- ‘Normalising settler colonialism through connectivity: East Jerusalem from data flows to human circulations', Cities, Infrastructures and the digital turn in the postcolony' King’s College London (June 2019)
- 'Infrastructural vulnerability: Lebanon’s double crisis and its makeshift networks' UK-German Frontiers of Humanities Symposium, Lübeck (May 2019)
- 'Spaces and Habitats – a reflection', Urban Lives symposium, Johannesburg (February 2019)
- Roundtable speaker: Urban geopolitical landscapes beyond militarism, Royal Geographic Society Annual Conference, Cardiff (August 2018)
- 'Jerusalem marginalia: the exclaves behind the Separation Barrier and the interstitial position of the Palestinian city' Cambridge City Seminar (October 2017)
- 'Violence in and through urban space: non-humans as actors?' History Takes Place summer school, Universities of Belgrade and Sarajevo (September 2017)
- 'The intimacy of infrastructure: vulnerability, disconnection, and abjection in Palestinian Jerusalem through the work of Khaled Jarrar', workshop Divided Cities: Culture, Infrastructure and the Urban Future, Research Centre in the Humanities, University of Oxford (June 2017)
- ‘The Grey Spaces Behind Jerusalem’s Wall: Questioning notions of informality and illegality under occupation’, Colloquium Thinking Spatial Practices with and against Law, Birkbeck Institute for Social Research, University of London (June 2015)
- ‘Infrastructural Violence: abjection and annexation in East Jerusalem’ Cities@King’s Seminar Series, King’s College London (May 2015)
- 'Moving on uncertain ground: urban mobility and contested boundaries in East Jerusalem', Urban Uncertainty Workshop (LSE Cities) Moving In and Around the City: Mobilities, Circulation, and Uncertainty, London School of Economics (May 2015)
- 'Networks of Power: Urban Infrastructures as Mediators of Violence in Jerusalem' Reverberations: Violence across Time and Space, Istanbul (March 2015)
- 'Infrastructural Violence: marginalisation and control in East Jerusalem', Artes Mundi Dialogues on Conflict - Urban Space: Exposing the Politics of Social Control, Oriel Davies Gallery, Newtown, Wales (December 2014)
- 'Archaeology and Violence: the "City of David" in the East Jerusalem neighbourhood of Silwan', Heritage Seminar, University of Cambridge (February 2014)
- 'Heritage Management in the Indian Urban Context: UNESCO’s Perspective', International Symposium on Heritage Management, University of Ahmedabad, India (April 2012)
Selected Conference Papers and Presentations:
- ‘Thinking through vulnerability: how conceptual approaches shape infrastructural responses’ Vulnerability, Infrastructure and displacement: The role of public services in Lebanese spaces of migration, University College London (June 2019)
- With Joana Dabaj and Andrea Rigon: ‘Participatory spatial research as collective care & care for the collective in a refugee-hosting town in the Beqaa Valley’ Infrastructures of Care: Spaces of Displacement and Refuge, The Bartlett, UCL (February 2019)
- 'Formalising schedules, delaying arrivals: time as a means of normalising and deregulating movement in East Jerusalem' Urban Timescapes and the Politics of Speed, Royal Geographic Society Annual Conference, Cardiff (August 2018)
- 'Making East Jerusalem legible: normalisation of mobility as a means of incorporation', Workshop series Seeing Like a State and the (Re-)Production of Urban Inequalities, Humboldt University, Berlin (May 2016)
- 'Infrastructural violence in East Jerusalem: sovereignty and contestation', Urban power, urban politics: reconnecting electricity and the city, American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, Chicago (April 2015)
- 'Jerusalem marginalia: the fragmentation of Palestinian space and the frontierisation of the ghetto', Urban Fragmentation(s): Borders & Identity, Humboldt University, Berlin (March 2015)
- 'Infrastructural Violence: exclusion and contested sovereignty in East Jerusalem', RBG-IGS Urban Geography Research Group Annual Conference - Critical Geographies of Urban Infrastructure, The Bartlett, University College London (November 2014)
- 'Moving through Contested Spaces in Jerusalem: Mobility and Marginalisation', Metamorphoses of the City - International Graduate Workshop, La Sapienza University of Rome (May & September 2014)
- 'Bodies on the Line: Geographical Imaginaries and Material Risks on the Margins of Jerusalem', Embodied Practices: beyond resistance in the city, Stadtkolloquium Annual Workshop, University College London (April 2014)
- 'Moving through Contested Spaces in Jerusalem: Mobility as an Arena of Palestinian Resilience', Living in Enclave Cities: Towards Mobility-Based Perspectives on Urban Segregation, University of Utrecht, Netherlands (March 2014)
- 'Undermining Palestinian East Jerusalem: Archaeology and Displacement in the Silwan Neighbourhood', European Association of Archaeologists Annual Meeting, Pilsen, Czech Republic (September 2013)
- 'Spatial Modes of Resistance to Neo-Liberal Policies in East Jerusalem', New Geographies of Resistance in the (Post) Neoliberal City, Royal Geographic Society Annual Conference, London (August 2013)
- 'Post-Communist Iconoclasms:Repression and Identity in the Urban Landscape of East Berlin', Urban Conflicts: Ethno-National Divisions, States and Cities, Queen's University Belfast (May 2011)
