Dr Pooya Ghoddousi

Pooya is a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Geography and Environment.

Before his academic career, Pooya trained and worked as an architect in Tehran before moving to Dubai. His disillusion with the unsustainable urban development in Dubai led him to study nomadism as an alternative to existing human settlements.

He joined an environmental NGO in Iran to live and work with pastoral nomads, and then carried the lessons into his participatory research and activism in London.

His master's and PhD theses (at LSE and UCL respectively) explored the nomadic tendencies in the transnational assemblages of identity, belonging and collective action among Iranians in London.

He has since held an Honorary Fellowship and an ESRC Post-doctoratal Research Fellowship at Queen Mary University of London, and a Teaching Fellowship at University College London.

His research, activism and writing are inspired by the concepts of assemblages and nomadism by Deleuze, Guattari and Ibn Khaldun.

Awards

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship

Publications

Academic

Dittmer, J., Ghoddousi, P., and Page S.  ‘Political geographies: Assemblage theory as methodology’, In Handbook of Methodologies in Human Geography, by M. W. Rosenberg, S. Lovell, S. E. Coen, Routledge, NY (release Oct 2022).

Ghoddousi, P.‘Assemblages’, in Concise Encyclopaedia of Human Geography, L. Lees and D. Demeritt (eds.) Elgar Encyclopedias in the Social Sciences series (release Feb 2023).

Ghoddousi, P., and Page S. (2020) ‘Using Ethnography and Assemblage Theory in Political Geography’, Geography Compass, 14(10): 1-13.

Ghoddousi, P. (2011) ‘Global Nomads or Temporary Citizens: Transnational mobility of ‘middling’ Iranians’in The Next Urban Question: Themes, Approaches, Tools, by V. Bandieramonte, K. Rashidzadeh, and P. Vigano, 311-320. IUAV University, Venice.

Other

Ghoddousi, P. (2020)‘Nomadism; Glimpses (reprint)’in Global Nomad Club by N. Bertch. Global Nomad Publishers.

Gage, S., and Ghoddousi, P. (2018)‘Towards a joint integrated degree in Architecture and Engineering’, Research report for Arup Foundation. Bartlett Faculty of Built Environment, University College London.

Minda, B., and Ghoddousi, P. (2014) ‘Notes on Iran.Interrupted’ in Iran.Interrupted by B. Minda, 140-154. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern.

Ghoddousi, P. (2005) ‘From Design Advice to Peer Review: Urban Design in Vancouver’ (trans.). Me’mar29, Tehran.