Producing the Public in Arab Societies: Space Working Group

Mona Damluji: Socio-Spatial Networks in Education City: Futurity, Liberalization, and New Urban Publics in Qatar

Mona Damluji is Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian & Islamic Art History and Visual Culture at Wheaton College in Massachusetts. She received her PhD in Architecture from the University of California Berkeley. Her research focuses on intersections among urban space and cinema in Iraq, Iran, and other oil-producing countries of the Gulf region. Her current book project titled “Petroleum’s Promise: The Neo-colonial Imaginary of Oil Cities in the Arabian Gulf,” weaves together related histories of oil, urbanization, and cinema to provide an analytical account of the rise of British oil company public relations as linked to the modern urban development of oil company towns and capital cities in oil-producing countries.

Mona’s research has been supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the Berkeley Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the Berkeley Center for British Studies. Mona has published her work in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East and Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review. She has organized numerous outreach events featuring film, photography and performance in Berkeley in collaboration with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Center for Race and Gender, Townsend Center for Humanities, and the International House. Mona has worked as the educational outreach coordinator for the Arab Film Festival in California for two years, curating the Arab Film Festival for the Schools program.

Professional Website

http://monadamluji.weebly.com/