Hatem Hegab studied Political Science, Middle East Studies, Anthropology and History at the American University in Cairo in 2017. During his undergraduate studies, his interests revolved around urban life and the socio-political intersections of the “Arab” identity. He received his MA in Global History at the Free University of Berlin and Humbolt University in Berlin in 2021 with a focus on the urban history of Cairo during the period of the open-door policy or the “Infitah”. He was particularly interested in how the desire for ‘modernity’ implicated urban policy and the built urban landscape of the Egyptian capital as part of the nation-state building project in the 1970s .

Post-Colonial Zamakan: Modern Urbanism from Rabat to Baghdad between 1920 and 2020

In his dissertation project, Hatem looks at the history of urban theory across Mediterranean cities, with a particular focus on how perceptions of space and time form discourses on urban theory. He begins with the Congrès internationaux d'architecture moderne (CIAM), from which architects took a significant interest in North African and West Asian cities in the post-war reconstruction of European cities. By looking at discursive material, Hatem hopes to complicate the North-South polemic on knowledge. He hopes to explore the knowledge produced by urban practitioners from North African and West Asian cities, challenging the colonial structures of knowledge production with regards to city building and urbanism.