Mariam Aref Mahmoud

Research Areas

Interests

colonialism, imperialism, critical military studies, urban theory, political economy, racial capitalism, spatial imaginaries, memory

Contact Information

mariamaref@berkeley.edu

Biography

My main research interest is how the guise of national security is used to destroy neighborhoods across Egypt for the purpose of privatized, militarized, and globalized placemaking. From this study, I am additionally hoping to look at ways in which Egyptians, and the global working class, have struggled against this perpetual rendering of their homes and lives as international speculative investment opportunities.

Education

M.S., Urban Planning, Columbia University

B.A., Economics, University of California, Los Angeles

B.A. (with departmental honors), Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles

selected publications

ROOTS: The Center for Ethnicity and Race Studies Journal.“Shaabi in the City: On Modernizing Sounds and Exclusion in Egyptian Cities." May 2024.

ROOTS: The Center for Ethnicity and Race Studies Journal. “Unbordering Rafah: Architectures of Colonialism in ‘Post’ Colonial Egypt." May 2024.

Avery Review. “Housing Crisis by Design: Egypt's Politics of Respectability.” March 2023.

UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy. US Foreign Policy in the Middle East: Changes in the Neoliberal Era. “Nowhere to Hide: Extents of US Sponsored Neoliberalism in Egypt from Sadat to Mubarak.” June 2021.