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Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.

History is littered with hundreds of conflicts over the future of a community, group, location or business that were "resolved" when one of the parties stepped ahead and destroyed what was there. With the original point of contention destroyed, the debates would fall to the wayside. Archive Team believes that by duplicated condemned data, the conversation and debate can continue, as well as the richness and insight gained by keeping the materials. Our projects have ranged in size from a single volunteer downloading the data to a small-but-critical site, to over 100 volunteers stepping forward to acquire terabytes of user-created data to save for future generations.

The main site for Archive Team is at archiveteam.org and contains up to the date information on various projects, manifestos, plans and walkthroughs.

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Huma Gupta

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Faculty Member +4Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, Faculty MemberMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), AlumnaMassachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art / Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, AlumnaBrandeis University, Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Post-DocNew York University Abu Dhabi, Humanities Research Fellowship, Post-Doc

Urban/Architectural Historian and Theorist

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81 Followers 6 FollowingTotal Views74 Public Mentions

Papers

Visualizing the Marshes in Mayzara: A Material History of Urban Wetlands in Baghdad

The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture, 2023

Iraq is located in Southwest Asia, and bordered by Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and... more Iraq is located in Southwest Asia, and bordered by Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. The country’s only access to a port is through Basra and Fao in the south, and both of these cities are situated on the Gulf. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are the most significant bodies of water and their river basins constitute the major agricultural belts in Iraq. In the 1970s, southeastern Iraq contained between 15,000 and 20,000 km2 of marshes in the southern basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is one of the largest inland delta systems in the world, and in its present form dates back 3,000 years. In 2016, four of the ahwar or marshes in southern Iraq, along with the archaeological sites of Uruk, Ur, and Tell Eridu, were declared world heritage sites by UNESCO. The marshlands host almost 200 species of migratory water birds. Much of the wetland ecosystem was intentionally dammed and drained by Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War in the 1990s. But since 2003, many of the wetlands have slowly been re-flooded and have gradually recovered. While this inland delta and vulnerable wetland ecosystems have tremendous cultural and environmental importance, this chapter argues for a broader understanding of how wetland ecosystems are defined and historically conceptualized in urban areas like Baghdad.

Prelapsarian landscapes and post-diluvian politics in mid-century Iraqi art

Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, 2021

The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in... more The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in Iraq. The decade began with an elite-driven programme of national development and ended in a popular anti-monarchic revolution on 14 July 1958. Between these competing visions of development and revolution, members of the Baghdad modern art scene negotiated between a drive towards institutionalization and state patronage with more radical critiques of the status quo. In 1950, for instance, the artist Faiq Hassan founded The Pioneers (Ar-Ruwwād) collective. It grew out of La Société Primitive, which Hassan originally established under the guiding principle that art should be taken outside the studio and into the streets. Their objective was to paint 'directly from the surrounding environment' (Floyd n.d.). But what exactly did Iraqi artists consider to be the environment? This article addresses this question by examining the divergent modes of representation adapted by mid-century Iraqi artists to reflect their environmental imaginations. These imaginations ranged from romantic depictions of prelapsarian landscapes to devastating floods, migration and dispossession faced by the majority of the country's poorer inhabitants who disproportionately bore the consequences of environmental catastrophes and interventions alike.

Staging Baghdad as a Problem of Development

International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2019

This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which co... more This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which contains rare footage of sarifa (reed and mud) settlements inhabited by rural migrants in mid-century Baghdad. The film, which was never finished, was produced as a collaboration between the Greek architect Constantinos A. Doxiadis and the director Demetrios Gaziades, who shot and edited the footage between Baghdad and Athens. Through this film Doxiadis intended to complement the Doxiadis Associates’ (DA) entry for the Iraq National Housing Exhibition and also to promote the modern housing projects designed by DA. In this period, various statist actors used the representational medium of documentary film in an attempt to redefine the boundaries of Iraqi citizenship. This film, thus, offered a cinematic portal into an other Baghdad, which was staged as the problem of development. Subsequent scenes narrated the solution to these neighbourhoods and positioned a family in a modern low-income house to animate the film’s developmental fantasy. The film projected universal Iraqi home ownership as a form of citizenship where the house was an instrument to facilitate financial, legal, and social agreements between rural migrants and the Iraqi state. By interrogating the methodological question of how to assemble an archive of ephemeral and subaltern places, this essay suggests expanding our notion of historiographic evidence to understand the intertwined relationships between the politics of development and architecture, and their representation in media.

The Birth of Sadr City and Popular Protest in Iraq

Middle East Brief, 2021

The creation of the suburban Baghdad district of Madinat al-Thawra (Revolution City, later known ... more The creation of the suburban Baghdad district of Madinat al-Thawra (Revolution City, later known as Saddam City and today as Sadr City) in 1959 is widely remembered as a heroic act by Iraq’s new republican government to house the thousands of rural migrants living at the time in reed mat and mudbrick huts. In this Brief, Huma Gupta revisits the birth of this famous housing project and argues that it was not due to the benevolent action of a populist leader and should not be seen as a model for top-down development projects in Iraq. She traces how migrants who came to Baghdad in the early- to mid-twentieth century formed an enduring urban underclass that collectively organized to demand housing, services, and higher wages. Thawra was conceived in response to years of worker protests, but its creation led to violent land dispossession on Baghdad’s outskirts and the enclave’s lack of basic services exacerbated economic inequality and hardened patterns of class-based spatial segregation. This history of dispossession and deprivation help explain why Thawra/Saddam City/Sadr City became and remains to this day a center for mass-based social mobilization in Iraq.

Encountering the Sonic Artifact in the Digital Archive

Thresholds, 2019

The technological apparatus of the post- 1895 shellac gramophone record facilitated the creation ... more The technological apparatus of the post- 1895 shellac gramophone record facilitated the creation of modern sonic archives. These archives contained comparable sets of ethnolinguistic and musical recordings or “data” inscribed onto 78-rpm records. They were seven, ten, or twelve inches wide, single- or double-sided, with recording lengths that varied from two to four minutes. Today, the decreasing cost of digitization has resulted in unprecedented access to older sonic archives, a process spearheaded by central institutions of the knowledge economy, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the British Library, the Library of Congress, and The Internet Archive. Historians are thus more likely to deal with the digital archive and not its analog antérieur. But how does this shift affect the method by which a historian can know the past through sound? It raises a number of questions, such as what types of critical listening apparatus does one need to encounter the sonic artifact in the digital archive? How does one deal with the inaccessibility and flattening of the sonic past? How should one interrogate the colonial context of an archive’s production and its underlying claims to facticity? This article will address these questions through the author’s own experience of historicizing a digital version of a rare, century-old sonic artifact that promised insights into a nearly extinct tradition of performative storytelling in the Indian subcontinent.

‘Nostalgic Desire’: The Restoration of Dar ul-Aman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan

Thresholds, 2017

This article critically examines the restoration of Dar ul-Aman Palace through a historical revie... more

‘Nostalgic Desire’: The Restoration of Dar ul-Aman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan

Thresholds, 2017

Encountering the Sonic Artifact in the Digital Archive

Thresholds, 2019

This article examines the technological apparatus of the post-1895 gramophone shellac record, whi... more This article examines the technological apparatus of the post-1895 gramophone shellac record, which facilitated the birth of modern sonic archives. These archives contained comparable sets of ethnolinguistic and musical recordings or ‘data’ inscribed onto 78-RPM records. Today, the decreasing cost of digitization has resulted in unprecedented access to older sonic archives, a process spearheaded by central institutions of the knowledge economy, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the British Library, the Library of Congress, and The Internet Archive. Historians are, thus, more likely to deal with the digital archive and not its analog antérieur. But, how does this affect the manner in which a historian can know the past through sound? It raises a number of methodological and historical concerns, such as what types of critical listening apparatus does one need to encounter the sonic artifact in the digital archive? How does one deal with the inaccessibility and flattening of the sonic past? How should one interrogate the colonial context of an archive’s production and its underlying claims to authenticity, facticity, and a hierarchical ordering of the world along a continuum of economic development that preserves and elevates cultural forms in the moment of their decline? This article addresses these questions through the author’s own experience of encountering and historicizing a digital version of a rare, century-old sonic artifact that promised insights into a nearly extinct tradition of performative storytelling in the Indian subcontinent.

Home Sweet Home: Housing practices and tools that support durable solutions for Urban Internally Displaced Persons

IDMC, 2015

Despite a longstanding recognition of the need to improve the response of actors addressing urban... more Despite a longstanding recognition of the need to improve the response of actors addressing urban displacement, there is a lack of guidance on how to do this and a limited knowledge of practices that have successfully addressed the housing, tenure security and livelihood needs of urban IDPs. This report, which is researched and written by Huma Gupta, is the result of collaboration between the UN Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the MIT Displacement Research and Action Network (DRAN). It presents different approaches and case studies that have been used to overcome recurrent challenges to adequate housing in urban displacement situations. It advocates for the use of a rights-based approach that supports the achievement of durable solutions by providing options that can guide and inform response when designing, funding or implementing housing policies and programmes in urban settings for policy makers and practitioners.

The Campaign to Eradicate Smallpox in Monarchic Iraq

Jadaliyya.com, 2020

The history of medicine is inextricably linked with the history of the environment. However, the ... more The history of medicine is inextricably linked with the history of the environment. However, the stark distinction between how we study the body and the environment correlates to the rise of area studies as well as the gatekeeping practices rooted in the professionalization of medicine and science. And yet, environmental and medical historians work within overlapping frameworks rooted in the understanding of medical histories along environmental variables, and environmental histories with medical implications. Therefore, the medicalization of the body and the mapping of the environment should be understood as co-produced historical processes. This article highlights the porous and symbiotic relationship between the human body and the environment through an examination of responses to the variola virus, or smallpox, in monarchic Iraq, 1921-1958.

Staging Baghdad as a Problem of Development

International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2019

This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which co... more This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which contains rare footage of sarifa (reed and mud) settlements inhabited by rural migrants in mid-century Baghdad. The film, which was never finished, was produced as a collaboration between the Greek architect Constantinos A. Doxiadis and the director Demetrios Gaziades, who shot and edited the footage between Baghdad and Athens. Through this film Doxiadis intended to complement the Doxiadis Associates’ (DA) entry for the Iraq National Housing Exhibition and also to promote the modern housing projects designed by DA. In this period, various statist actors used the representational medium of documentary film in an attempt to redefine the boundaries of Iraqi citizenship. This film, thus, offered a cinematic portal into an other Baghdad, which was staged as the problem of development. Subsequent scenes narrated the solution to these neighbourhoods and positioned a family in a modern low-income house to animate the film’s developmental fantasy. The film projected universal Iraqi home ownership as a form of citizenship where the house was an instrument to facilitate financial, legal, and social agreements between rural migrants and the Iraqi state. By interrogating the methodological question of how to assemble an archive of ephemeral and subaltern places, this essay suggests expanding our notion of historiographic evidence to understand the intertwined relationships between the politics of development and architecture, and their representation in media.

Accountable to beneficiaries? : the modern development enterprise & its contractors at war : lessons on accountability from Afghanistan to inform the contracting reform agenda

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, June... more

Home sweet home Housing practices and tools that support durable solutions for urban IDPs

Human Rights Documents Online

Staging Baghdad as a Problem of Development

International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2019

This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which co... more This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which contains rare footage of sarifa (reed and mud) settlements inhabited by rural migrants in mid-century Baghdad. The film, which was never finished, was produced as a collaboration between the Greek architect Constantinos A. Doxiadis and the director Demetrios Gaziades, who shot and edited the footage between Baghdad and Athens. Through this film Doxiadis intended to complement the Doxiadis Associates’ (DA) entry for the Iraq National Housing Exhibition and also to promote the modern housing projects designed by DA. In this period, various statist actors used the representational medium of documentary film in an attempt to redefine the boundaries of Iraqi citizenship. This film, thus, offered a cinematic portal into an other Baghdad, which was staged as the problem of development. Subsequent scenes narrated the solution to these neighbourhoods and positioned a family in a modern low-income house to animate the film’s developmental fantasy. The film projected universal Iraqi home ownership as a form of citizenship where the house was an instrument to facilitate financial, legal, and social agreements between rural migrants and the Iraqi state. By interrogating the methodological question of how to assemble an archive of ephemeral and subaltern places, this essay suggests expanding our notion of historiographic evidence to understand the intertwined relationships between the politics of development and architecture, and their representation in media.

Prelapsarian landscapes and post-diluvian politics in mid-century Iraqi art

Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, 2021

The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in... more The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in Iraq. The decade began with an elite-driven programme of national development and ended in a popular anti-monarchic revolution on 14 July 1958. Between these competing visions of development and revolution, members of the Baghdad modern art scene negotiated between a drive towards institutionalization and state patronage with more radical critiques of the status quo. In 1950, for instance, the artist Faiq Hassan founded The Pioneers (Ar-Ruwwād) collective. It grew out of La Société Primitive, which Hassan originally established under the guiding principle that art should be taken outside the studio and into the streets. Their objective was to paint ‘directly from the surrounding environment’ (Floyd n.d.). But what exactly did Iraqi artists consider to be the environment? This article addresses this question by examining the divergent modes of representation adapted by mid-century Iraqi ...

Rural Migrants, Smallpox, and Civic Surgery in 20th- Century Baghdad, Iraq

Books

Rural Migrants, Smallpox, and Civic Surgery in 20c. Baghdad, Iraq

Epidemic Urbanism: How Contagious Diseases have Shaped Global Cities, 2021

This article discusses how epidemics and epidemic responses can amplify existing patterns of soci... more This article discusses how epidemics and epidemic responses can amplify existing patterns of social inequality, in turn shaping urban life and social practices. Public discourse on smallpox eradication in 1950s Iraq demonstrates the ways marginalized populations like rural migrants are perceived as vectors of disease; by association, their settlements are seen as epicenters of outbreaks, regardless of the actual source of disease. Following smallpox outbreaks in 1948 and 1956, the Iraqi state made rural migrants and their settlements the central subject of medical and urban planning interventions. State- wide inoculation campaigns took place as Iraq experienced an exponential growth in the oil revenues that fueled the rapid expansion of its financial, medical, statistical, and urban planning institutions. This article further demonstrates how epidemics often give rise to the medicalization of city planning programs and vocabulary, such as “civic surgery,” which can permit the reconfiguration of political dissidents and the urban poor as cancerous growths or an infectious pox that needs to be excised from the healthy growing body of the city or state.

Visualizing the Marshes in Mayzara: A Material History of Urban Wetlands in Baghdad

The Environment and Ecology in Islamic Art and Culture, 2023

Iraq is located in Southwest Asia, and bordered by Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and... more Iraq is located in Southwest Asia, and bordered by Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Turkey. The country’s only access to a port is through Basra and Fao in the south, and both of these cities are situated on the Gulf. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers are the most significant bodies of water and their river basins constitute the major agricultural belts in Iraq. In the 1970s, southeastern Iraq contained between 15,000 and 20,000 km2 of marshes in the southern basin of the Tigris and Euphrates. It is one of the largest inland delta systems in the world, and in its present form dates back 3,000 years. In 2016, four of the ahwar or marshes in southern Iraq, along with the archaeological sites of Uruk, Ur, and Tell Eridu, were declared world heritage sites by UNESCO. The marshlands host almost 200 species of migratory water birds. Much of the wetland ecosystem was intentionally dammed and drained by Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War in the 1990s. But since 2003, many of the wetlands have slowly been re-flooded and have gradually recovered. While this inland delta and vulnerable wetland ecosystems have tremendous cultural and environmental importance, this chapter argues for a broader understanding of how wetland ecosystems are defined and historically conceptualized in urban areas like Baghdad.

Prelapsarian landscapes and post-diluvian politics in mid-century Iraqi art

Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, 2021

The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in... more The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in Iraq. The decade began with an elite-driven programme of national development and ended in a popular anti-monarchic revolution on 14 July 1958. Between these competing visions of development and revolution, members of the Baghdad modern art scene negotiated between a drive towards institutionalization and state patronage with more radical critiques of the status quo. In 1950, for instance, the artist Faiq Hassan founded The Pioneers (Ar-Ruwwād) collective. It grew out of La Société Primitive, which Hassan originally established under the guiding principle that art should be taken outside the studio and into the streets. Their objective was to paint 'directly from the surrounding environment' (Floyd n.d.). But what exactly did Iraqi artists consider to be the environment? This article addresses this question by examining the divergent modes of representation adapted by mid-century Iraqi artists to reflect their environmental imaginations. These imaginations ranged from romantic depictions of prelapsarian landscapes to devastating floods, migration and dispossession faced by the majority of the country's poorer inhabitants who disproportionately bore the consequences of environmental catastrophes and interventions alike.

Staging Baghdad as a Problem of Development

International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2019

This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which co... more This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which contains rare footage of sarifa (reed and mud) settlements inhabited by rural migrants in mid-century Baghdad. The film, which was never finished, was produced as a collaboration between the Greek architect Constantinos A. Doxiadis and the director Demetrios Gaziades, who shot and edited the footage between Baghdad and Athens. Through this film Doxiadis intended to complement the Doxiadis Associates’ (DA) entry for the Iraq National Housing Exhibition and also to promote the modern housing projects designed by DA. In this period, various statist actors used the representational medium of documentary film in an attempt to redefine the boundaries of Iraqi citizenship. This film, thus, offered a cinematic portal into an other Baghdad, which was staged as the problem of development. Subsequent scenes narrated the solution to these neighbourhoods and positioned a family in a modern low-income house to animate the film’s developmental fantasy. The film projected universal Iraqi home ownership as a form of citizenship where the house was an instrument to facilitate financial, legal, and social agreements between rural migrants and the Iraqi state. By interrogating the methodological question of how to assemble an archive of ephemeral and subaltern places, this essay suggests expanding our notion of historiographic evidence to understand the intertwined relationships between the politics of development and architecture, and their representation in media.

The Birth of Sadr City and Popular Protest in Iraq

Middle East Brief, 2021

The creation of the suburban Baghdad district of Madinat al-Thawra (Revolution City, later known ... more The creation of the suburban Baghdad district of Madinat al-Thawra (Revolution City, later known as Saddam City and today as Sadr City) in 1959 is widely remembered as a heroic act by Iraq’s new republican government to house the thousands of rural migrants living at the time in reed mat and mudbrick huts. In this Brief, Huma Gupta revisits the birth of this famous housing project and argues that it was not due to the benevolent action of a populist leader and should not be seen as a model for top-down development projects in Iraq. She traces how migrants who came to Baghdad in the early- to mid-twentieth century formed an enduring urban underclass that collectively organized to demand housing, services, and higher wages. Thawra was conceived in response to years of worker protests, but its creation led to violent land dispossession on Baghdad’s outskirts and the enclave’s lack of basic services exacerbated economic inequality and hardened patterns of class-based spatial segregation. This history of dispossession and deprivation help explain why Thawra/Saddam City/Sadr City became and remains to this day a center for mass-based social mobilization in Iraq.

Encountering the Sonic Artifact in the Digital Archive

Thresholds, 2019

The technological apparatus of the post- 1895 shellac gramophone record facilitated the creation ... more The technological apparatus of the post- 1895 shellac gramophone record facilitated the creation of modern sonic archives. These archives contained comparable sets of ethnolinguistic and musical recordings or “data” inscribed onto 78-rpm records. They were seven, ten, or twelve inches wide, single- or double-sided, with recording lengths that varied from two to four minutes. Today, the decreasing cost of digitization has resulted in unprecedented access to older sonic archives, a process spearheaded by central institutions of the knowledge economy, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the British Library, the Library of Congress, and The Internet Archive. Historians are thus more likely to deal with the digital archive and not its analog antérieur. But how does this shift affect the method by which a historian can know the past through sound? It raises a number of questions, such as what types of critical listening apparatus does one need to encounter the sonic artifact in the digital archive? How does one deal with the inaccessibility and flattening of the sonic past? How should one interrogate the colonial context of an archive’s production and its underlying claims to facticity? This article will address these questions through the author’s own experience of historicizing a digital version of a rare, century-old sonic artifact that promised insights into a nearly extinct tradition of performative storytelling in the Indian subcontinent.

‘Nostalgic Desire’: The Restoration of Dar ul-Aman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan

Thresholds, 2017

This article critically examines the restoration of Dar ul-Aman Palace through a historical revie... more

‘Nostalgic Desire’: The Restoration of Dar ul-Aman Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan

Thresholds, 2017

Encountering the Sonic Artifact in the Digital Archive

Thresholds, 2019

This article examines the technological apparatus of the post-1895 gramophone shellac record, whi... more This article examines the technological apparatus of the post-1895 gramophone shellac record, which facilitated the birth of modern sonic archives. These archives contained comparable sets of ethnolinguistic and musical recordings or ‘data’ inscribed onto 78-RPM records. Today, the decreasing cost of digitization has resulted in unprecedented access to older sonic archives, a process spearheaded by central institutions of the knowledge economy, such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), the British Library, the Library of Congress, and The Internet Archive. Historians are, thus, more likely to deal with the digital archive and not its analog antérieur. But, how does this affect the manner in which a historian can know the past through sound? It raises a number of methodological and historical concerns, such as what types of critical listening apparatus does one need to encounter the sonic artifact in the digital archive? How does one deal with the inaccessibility and flattening of the sonic past? How should one interrogate the colonial context of an archive’s production and its underlying claims to authenticity, facticity, and a hierarchical ordering of the world along a continuum of economic development that preserves and elevates cultural forms in the moment of their decline? This article addresses these questions through the author’s own experience of encountering and historicizing a digital version of a rare, century-old sonic artifact that promised insights into a nearly extinct tradition of performative storytelling in the Indian subcontinent.

Home Sweet Home: Housing practices and tools that support durable solutions for Urban Internally Displaced Persons

IDMC, 2015

Despite a longstanding recognition of the need to improve the response of actors addressing urban... more Despite a longstanding recognition of the need to improve the response of actors addressing urban displacement, there is a lack of guidance on how to do this and a limited knowledge of practices that have successfully addressed the housing, tenure security and livelihood needs of urban IDPs. This report, which is researched and written by Huma Gupta, is the result of collaboration between the UN Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre and the MIT Displacement Research and Action Network (DRAN). It presents different approaches and case studies that have been used to overcome recurrent challenges to adequate housing in urban displacement situations. It advocates for the use of a rights-based approach that supports the achievement of durable solutions by providing options that can guide and inform response when designing, funding or implementing housing policies and programmes in urban settings for policy makers and practitioners.

The Campaign to Eradicate Smallpox in Monarchic Iraq

Jadaliyya.com, 2020

The history of medicine is inextricably linked with the history of the environment. However, the ... more The history of medicine is inextricably linked with the history of the environment. However, the stark distinction between how we study the body and the environment correlates to the rise of area studies as well as the gatekeeping practices rooted in the professionalization of medicine and science. And yet, environmental and medical historians work within overlapping frameworks rooted in the understanding of medical histories along environmental variables, and environmental histories with medical implications. Therefore, the medicalization of the body and the mapping of the environment should be understood as co-produced historical processes. This article highlights the porous and symbiotic relationship between the human body and the environment through an examination of responses to the variola virus, or smallpox, in monarchic Iraq, 1921-1958.

Staging Baghdad as a Problem of Development

International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2019

This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which co... more This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which contains rare footage of sarifa (reed and mud) settlements inhabited by rural migrants in mid-century Baghdad. The film, which was never finished, was produced as a collaboration between the Greek architect Constantinos A. Doxiadis and the director Demetrios Gaziades, who shot and edited the footage between Baghdad and Athens. Through this film Doxiadis intended to complement the Doxiadis Associates’ (DA) entry for the Iraq National Housing Exhibition and also to promote the modern housing projects designed by DA. In this period, various statist actors used the representational medium of documentary film in an attempt to redefine the boundaries of Iraqi citizenship. This film, thus, offered a cinematic portal into an other Baghdad, which was staged as the problem of development. Subsequent scenes narrated the solution to these neighbourhoods and positioned a family in a modern low-income house to animate the film’s developmental fantasy. The film projected universal Iraqi home ownership as a form of citizenship where the house was an instrument to facilitate financial, legal, and social agreements between rural migrants and the Iraqi state. By interrogating the methodological question of how to assemble an archive of ephemeral and subaltern places, this essay suggests expanding our notion of historiographic evidence to understand the intertwined relationships between the politics of development and architecture, and their representation in media.

Accountable to beneficiaries? : the modern development enterprise & its contractors at war : lessons on accountability from Afghanistan to inform the contracting reform agenda

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, June... more

Home sweet home Housing practices and tools that support durable solutions for urban IDPs

Human Rights Documents Online

Staging Baghdad as a Problem of Development

International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 2019

This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which co... more This article examines a cinematic artefact from 1957 titled The Housing Program of Iraq, which contains rare footage of sarifa (reed and mud) settlements inhabited by rural migrants in mid-century Baghdad. The film, which was never finished, was produced as a collaboration between the Greek architect Constantinos A. Doxiadis and the director Demetrios Gaziades, who shot and edited the footage between Baghdad and Athens. Through this film Doxiadis intended to complement the Doxiadis Associates’ (DA) entry for the Iraq National Housing Exhibition and also to promote the modern housing projects designed by DA. In this period, various statist actors used the representational medium of documentary film in an attempt to redefine the boundaries of Iraqi citizenship. This film, thus, offered a cinematic portal into an other Baghdad, which was staged as the problem of development. Subsequent scenes narrated the solution to these neighbourhoods and positioned a family in a modern low-income house to animate the film’s developmental fantasy. The film projected universal Iraqi home ownership as a form of citizenship where the house was an instrument to facilitate financial, legal, and social agreements between rural migrants and the Iraqi state. By interrogating the methodological question of how to assemble an archive of ephemeral and subaltern places, this essay suggests expanding our notion of historiographic evidence to understand the intertwined relationships between the politics of development and architecture, and their representation in media.

Prelapsarian landscapes and post-diluvian politics in mid-century Iraqi art

Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, 2021

The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in... more The 1950s was a decade marked by radical artistic, environmental and political transformations in Iraq. The decade began with an elite-driven programme of national development and ended in a popular anti-monarchic revolution on 14 July 1958. Between these competing visions of development and revolution, members of the Baghdad modern art scene negotiated between a drive towards institutionalization and state patronage with more radical critiques of the status quo. In 1950, for instance, the artist Faiq Hassan founded The Pioneers (Ar-Ruwwād) collective. It grew out of La Société Primitive, which Hassan originally established under the guiding principle that art should be taken outside the studio and into the streets. Their objective was to paint ‘directly from the surrounding environment’ (Floyd n.d.). But what exactly did Iraqi artists consider to be the environment? This article addresses this question by examining the divergent modes of representation adapted by mid-century Iraqi ...

Rural Migrants, Smallpox, and Civic Surgery in 20th- Century Baghdad, Iraq

Rural Migrants, Smallpox, and Civic Surgery in 20c. Baghdad, Iraq

Epidemic Urbanism: How Contagious Diseases have Shaped Global Cities, 2021

This article discusses how epidemics and epidemic responses can amplify existing patterns of soci... more This article discusses how epidemics and epidemic responses can amplify existing patterns of social inequality, in turn shaping urban life and social practices. Public discourse on smallpox eradication in 1950s Iraq demonstrates the ways marginalized populations like rural migrants are perceived as vectors of disease; by association, their settlements are seen as epicenters of outbreaks, regardless of the actual source of disease. Following smallpox outbreaks in 1948 and 1956, the Iraqi state made rural migrants and their settlements the central subject of medical and urban planning interventions. State- wide inoculation campaigns took place as Iraq experienced an exponential growth in the oil revenues that fueled the rapid expansion of its financial, medical, statistical, and urban planning institutions. This article further demonstrates how epidemics often give rise to the medicalization of city planning programs and vocabulary, such as “civic surgery,” which can permit the reconfiguration of political dissidents and the urban poor as cancerous growths or an infectious pox that needs to be excised from the healthy growing body of the city or state.