VIRTUAL UPRISINGS: Tahir Square, Social Media,
and the Return of Public Space

A talk by: Nezar AlSayyad
Professor of Architecture and Planning
University of California, Berkeley

Tahrir Square became a household name around the globe during the events of the so called “Arab spring” in 2011. Architecturally speaking, the events of that year signaled the return of public space to the arena of politics. This talk looks at the spaces of this Arab uprising and focuses on the relationship between their virtual and physical spaces.

Nezar AlSayyad is Professor of Architecture and Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor AlSayyad chaired the University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies for two decades until 2014. He also directed the Graduate Program in International and Area Studies, and the PhD Program in Architecture.

In 1988, Professor AlSayyad co-founded the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments. Today, he still serves as the Association’s President and Editor of its highly acclaimed peer-reviewed journal Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review. AlSayyad is also the Principal of XXA-the Office of Xross-Cultural Architecture.

He is the recipient of many grants and awards for his research, books, films, and projects. In 2008, the University of California at Berkeley awarded him the Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest honor Berkeley bestows on its faculty. In 2014-15, AlSayyad was awarded a Distinguished Guggenheim Fellowship, and he is on sabbatical from Berkeley working on a new book project entitled NILE: Urban Histories on the Banks of a River to be published by Harvard University Press in 2016.

Professor AlSayyad is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of many books, which include Hybrid Urbanism; Muslim Europe or Euro-Islam translated to Arabic, Spanish, and Turkish; The End of Tradition; The Fundamentalist City; and most recently, Traditions: The Real, the Hyper and the Virtual.

RSVP by Monday, April 27
Phone: +962 6 5777 955 ext. 235
Mobile: 077 9999 675
Email: [email protected]