Architecture and design
Howayda Al-Harithy is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the Department of Architecture and Design (ArD) at the American University of Beirut (AUB). She joined AUB in 1994 and served as Chair of ArD from 2003 to 2006 and from 2009 to 2012. She was also a visiting professor at Harvard University, MIT, and Georgetown University. She is currently serving as Founding Director for the Palestine Land Studies Center at AUB. She obtained a Bachelor of Architecture from the Oregon School of Design (1985), a Master of Science in Architecture from MIT (1987), and a Ph.D. in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University (1992). Al-Harithy’s research focuses on urban heritage and contemporary interventions in historic cities. Her early research was centered on the architectural and urban practices of the Mamluk period. It engaged theoretical models of interpretation, particularly post-structuralist models, as analytic tools of the production of architectural and urban space in medieval cities. The research evolved to focus on urban heritage with a special emphasis on the theoretical debate on heritage construction and consumption related to identity building and post-war reconstruction in the Arab world. Her current research conceptualizes urban recovery in relation to processes of historical editing, urban trauma, and protracted displacement. This research is advanced through her role as a research director of the urban recovery track at the AUB Urban Lab and as a collaborator on the RELIEF (Refugees, Education, Learning, Information Technology, and Entrepreneurship for the Future) project with the Institute for Global Prosperity at University College London. She is widely published with over 50 articles, book chapters, and reports in leading journals and refereed books. She is the editor of and contributor to Lessons in Post-War Reconstruction: Case Studies from Lebanon in the Aftermath of the 2006 War (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), Post-war Recovery of Cultural Heritage Sites: Aleppo Taht al Qalaa (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 2019, with Jala Makhzoumi), and a forthcoming book is entitled Urban Recovery: Intersecting Displacement with Reconstruction (Routledge 2021) She is the recipient of numerous grants from major international foundations, including the Kress, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the British Academy, and the Economic and Social Research Council in the UK. Al-Harithy is active on a number of boards and scientific committees including: the Executive Board of Advisors for the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments at the University of California, Berkeley, the Senior Advisory Board for Lonaard Magazine in London, the Advisory Board for the International Joint Master Program Urban Design - Vitalization of Historic City Districts at German and Arab universities, the Board of Governors for Dialectic: Journal of the School of Architecture at the University of Utah, the Advisory Board for the Jordan Journal for Fine Arts at Yarmouk University, the Board of Trustees for the Sharjah International Foundation for the History of Arabic and Islamic Sciences, and Board of Reviewers for the Athens Journal of Architecture at the Athens Institute for Education & Research. She served as a juror in major international competitions, notably as Head of the Holcim Awards jury for Africa Middle East in 2014 and 2017, Chair of the Jeddah Metro Company jury in 2014, and as a member of the master jury for the Aga Khan Award for Architecture during the 2013 cycle. She served on numerous other international juries including: International Design Competition for Revelation Museum in Mecca, Saudi Arabia in 2020, International Design Competition for the Revitalization of the City of Jerusalem, Arab Association of Architects, Beirut 2020, International Competition for the Istanbul Environment-Friendly City Award (IEFCA) 2019, organized by the UN Environm