The Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) organized a webinar to launch “Lebanon Unsettled”, a collaborative research project with the London School of Economics (LSE).

This event, hosted by the Research Team of the School of Architecture and Design, in collaboration with the LSE’s Middle East Center, took place on Wednesday, February 3, 2021, at 4:00 p.m., via Microsoft Teams.

For more information, please contact Dr. May Farhat at mayfarhat@usek.edu.lb or Dr. Deen Sharp at d.s.sharp@lse.ac.uk

Background

The large-scale, non-sectarian protests of 2019 unsettled Lebanon’s political system and challenged the very understanding of the Lebanese history, space, and identity. This project aims to build on the momentum of this protest movement to help the new generation rewrite and potentially heal the country’s bitterly disputed histories.

Through student workshops and collaborative research, “Lebanon Unsettled” will establish a publicly accessible archive of Lebanon's recent urban protests. Using the new and enlarged archival collections at USEK and, more broadly, in Lebanon, this initiative will place the 2019 protests in their larger historical and geographical context, rereading Lebanese urban history through the eyes of urban revolt from the Ottoman era to the present day.

The webinar included a speech by Fr. Talal Hachem, USEK President, and an introduction by Dr. Michael Mason, Director of the Middle East Centre (MEC) of the London School of Economics (LSE), on the center’s work and the Academic Collaboration with the Arab Universities Programme funded by the Emirates Foundation.

RESEARCH TEAM

Principal investigators:
- Dr. Deen Sharp, LSE Fellow in Human Geography, Department of Geography and Environment.
- Dr. May Farhat, Associate Professor – School of Architecture and Design, USEK.

Researchers:
- Abdul-Halim Jabr, Adjunct Professor – School of Architecture and Design, USEK.
- Richart Khalil, architect, planner, and lecturer – École d’Urbanisme de Paris (EUP).