Dena Qaddumi is an urban and architectural scholar. Her work primarily draws on postcolonial urban theory, political geography, and cultural studies, with a regional interest in the Middle East and North Africa.

Dena joined the Department of Sociology in September 2022 as Fellow in City Design and Social Science. She holds a B. Arch from the University of Texas at Austin, an MSc in Urban Development Planning from UCL, and a PhD in Architecture from the University of Cambridge.

Her research is concerned with how urban sites become centres for political and cultural conflict during periods of profound social change. This has included investigations on urban planning as domination and opposition in an ethnically divided Tel Aviv-Jaffa; neighbourhood design and the public realm in rapidly expanding Doha; and the urban consequences of revolution in 21st century Tunis.

She has worked in architecture, urban planning, and higher education in New York, London, Palestine and Doha. These experiences have shaped the international and comparative approach she brings to my research and teaching practice.

At LSE, Dena teaches on the City Design: Research Studio course. She has also taught at De Montfort University and the University of Cambridge.

Publications

Forthcoming. ‘Palaces of Power in Tunis: Entanglements of Nation and State from Independence to Revolution’ in Architecture of the Territory: Constructing a National Narrative ed. by Collective for Architecture Lebanon (Beirut: Kaph Books)

2018. with S. Singler (eds). Scroope: Cambridge Architecture Journal, 27.

2017. with A. Ahmadi. ‘Scaling Down Planning in Doha Towards the Neighborhood and its Public Realm’, QScience Connect, Shaping Qatar’s Sustainable Built Environment, 2017: qgbc.2: 1-22

2013. ‘Advancing the Struggle for Urban Justice to the Assertion of Substantive Citizenship: Challenging Ethnocracy in Tel Aviv-Jaffa’, DPU Working Paper, 150, University College London.