In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Dr. Nour Joudah speaks with Ahmad Gharbieh, professor at the American University of Beirut and co-founder of the Beirut Urban Lab, an interdisciplinary research space. They discuss the process and value of critical cartography, which analyzes maps as instruments of power, looking at who has the authority to create maps and what is included and represented within them. And they speak about Beirut Urban Lab's critical mapping of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, its invasion of southern Lebanon, and attacks on Beirut, and the links between mapping and policy-making. See their projects here: https://beiruturbanlab.com/en/Projects

Ahmad Gharbieh is Associate Professor and Convener of the Graphic Design Program at the School of Architecture and Design at the American University of Beirut. He is also co-founder of the Beirut Urban Lab, an interdisciplinary and collaborative research space where he leads the Critical Mapping design-research track. His scholarly work explores mapping as a method of researching, representing, and analyzing socio-spatial phenomena. His work in critical cartography has covered many subjects including urban security and recovery, public space, refugee practices in the city, political violence, and much more. 

Nour Joudah, PhD is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA and a former President’s and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Geography at UC-Berkeley (2022-23). Dr. Joudah completed her PhD in Geography at UCLA (2022), and wrote her dissertation Mapping Decolonized Futures: Indigenous Visions for Hawaii and Palestine on the efforts by Palestinian and native Hawaiian communities to imagine and work toward liberated futures while centering indigenous duration as a non-linear temporality. Her work examines mapping practices and indigenous survival and futures in settler states, highlighting how indigenous countermapping is a both cartographic and decolonial praxis. She also has a MA in Arab Studies from Georgetown University, and wrote her MA thesis on the role and perception of exile politics within the Palestinian liberation struggle, in particular among politically active Palestinian youth living in the United States and occupied Palestine. Prof. Joudah is a 2024 FMEP non-residential Fellow.

Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.