Negotiating Conflict
Dr Mohamad Hafeda, The Leeds School of Architecture | Leeds Beckett
Mohamad Hafeda is an artist, a writer and an academic. He is a founding partner of Febrik, a collaborative platform for participatory art and design research working on issues of refuge and spatial rights (Febrik.org). Hafeda holds a PhD degree in Architectural Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (2015). He is a senior lecturer of architecture at Leeds Beckett University. Hafeda is the author of Negotiating Conflict in Lebanon: Bordering Practices in a Divided Beirut (I.B. Tauris, 2019). He is the co-author of Febrik’s projects Creative Refuge (Tadween, 2014) and Action of Street/Action of Room: A Directory of Public Actions (Serpentine Galleries, 2016), and the co-editor of Narrating Beirut from its Borderlines (Heinrich Boll Foundation, 2011).
Displaced Italianness through the Lens of Tranculturation and Acculturation
George Epolito, The Leeds School of Architecture | Leeds Beckett
George Epolito is an academic whose career has spanned over two decades in the United States, Puerto Rico, Italy, and the United Kingdom. His research explores the intersection of politics and culture with an emphasis on the innovative, hybridised aesthetics produced by people who have been displaced into the margins of societies. Initial investigations generally explored the plight of marginalised cultures, their situation within the realm of the everyday, and their potential for informing new (urban) design strategies for the built environment. The specific cultures studied were African-American, Puerto Rican, and Italian immigrant – both in Rió de la Plata Basin of Latin America and the Deep South of the United States. More recent research included the Italian influence in their former colonies in North and East Africa. Future research intends to revisit Buenos Aires looking at new displaced cultures in the urban margins of its villas miserias (shanty towns).
