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Gehan Selim

Position
Professor of Architecture, University of Leeds

Gehan Selim is Professor of Architecture and Deputy Director at Leeds Social Sciences Institute at the University of Leeds.  She was Fellow of the Senator George Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice (2016/17). She obtained a PhD in Architecture from the University of Sheffield and held permanent posts in several international schools of Architecture in the Middle East and the UK. Dr Selim’s architectural practice experience includes designing a wide range of urban housing and educational projects, exhibitions and schools. She has over 25 years of experience in teaching, developing and delivering courses in architecture and urban design at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She serves on the editorial board and scientific committee of several international journals and conferences. Dr Selim is an affiliate member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and an Associate Member of the Higher Education Academy (HE).

Dr Selim's teaching aims to develop sufficient integration between the design studios and architectural representation. She supervises a growing number of Postgraduate Dissertations (MArch, MSc & PhD) exploring themes of cultural heritage and digital applications, segeragation and contested spaces and new global trends that shape the architectural practice. Gehan is widely committed to providing balanced experiences in learning by promoting a variety of teaching approaches, such as peer learning and reflection. She is interested in encouraging students to be critical of their education, build confidence and self-motivation, which should enable Architecture students' full engagement in a healthy teaching and learning environment.

Research interests

Dr Selim has consolidated international and interdisciplinary resaerch, scholarship and empirical methodologies in Architectural Humanities, Post-Conflict urbanism and Digital Heritage to bridge people, buildings, and the city. She has received the Women of Achievement Awards 2021, highlighting the significant contributions and impact the women have made across the University and beyond. She is CoI on the Newton Prize 2020 Award winning project ‘Our Past, Our Future, All Together in Faynan – OPOF’: An international project using local heritage and archaeology to support sustainable development.

Her research also focuses on Architecture and Digital Heritage methodologies and research fields in liberation politics, resilient cities and geographies of conflict, looking particularly at how memory informs post-conflict societies in their everyday practices. She is the founder and lead of the Architecture and Urbanism group, Chaired the City (Re)shaped multi-disciplinary Conference and Guest Editor.

Dr Selim received several GCRF awards on Preservation of Cultural Heritage funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, British Academy and Research England. She is the PI of The Living Museum of Umm Qais and Creative Economies Through Youth- led Arts and Craft in Jordan (CEARC) projects in Jordan. She is also PI of the ‘(Re)Contextualisng Contested Heritage  – ReConHeritage Project in partnership with academics and youth people from Kosovo, Lebanon and Iraq to mount interdisciplinary approaches in conflict regions. She is CoI on Heritage Borders of Engagement Network [ENGAGE] that aims to mobilizing cultural heritage for building partnerships and institutions for sustainable and inclusive peace in three hubs: The Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia.

For further information about Dr Selim, please visit Professor Gehan Selim | School of Civil Engineering | University of Leeds

Seminar Three Provocation: Architecture and Spatial Memory in Post-Conflict Urbanism

This provocation explores the condition of shared living in divided and segregated contexts and looks at how people perceive their cities and urban life, and what determines their use of space and attitudes toward the public, shared, and integrated spaces of the city? This condition determines how patterns and attitudes change with time and in light of social and cultural demography changes. It also develops a discussion of the complexity of the spatial manifestation of conditions of post-conflict urban segregation and how the notion of “shareness” has been at the centre of changing living patterns.