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About Me

Dalal Musaed Alsayer, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at Kuwait University. Her research lies at the intersection of architecture, environment, and development in the context of the Arab World during the twentieth century.

She is the co-author, with Ricardo Camacho & Sara Saragoça Soares, of “Pan-Arab Modernism: History of Architectural Practice in The Middle East” (Actar, 2021) and is currently developing her manuscript based on her dissertation, “Architecture, Environment, Development: The United States and the Making of Modern Arabia, 1949-1961,” which examines the ways the that United States’s development programs sought to transform the social, environmental, and urban fabric of the Arab World.

Dalal holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Kuwait University; a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from the GSAPP, Columbia University; a Master of Design Studies in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology, from GSD, Harvard University; and a Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.

Recent Publications

Books 

Ricardo Camacho, Dalal Musaed Alsayer, and Sara Saragoça Soares. Pan-Arab Modernism 1968-2018: A History of Architectural Practice in The Middle East. Barcelona, Spain: Actar, 2021. Bilingual [English and Arabic] 

Chapters in Books [^ commissioned] [** peer-reviewed] 

“TVA in the Desert: Infrastructures of All-American Development in Jordan.” In The Routledge Handbook on Infrastructure Design: Global Views from Architectural History, edited by Joseph Heathcott. Basingstoke, UK: Routledge, 2021. [under contract] 

“The ‘Right to the City’ in the Landscapes of Servitude and Migration, from the Philippines to the Arabian Gulf, and Back.” In Mapping Migration, Identity, and Space, edited by Tabea Linhard and Timothy H. Parsons, 283–311. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.** 

 “Utopian Dreams in the Making of Kuwait: From Sand and Mud to Grass and Concrete.” In Essays, Arguments & Interviews on Modern Architecture Kuwait, edited by Ricardo Camacho, Sara Saragoça Soares, and Roberto Fabbri, 222–32. Switzerland: Niggli, 2017. ** ^ 

Articles [^ invited] 

“Airplane, Pipeline, Car, House: Oil and the Anywhere, U.S.A. Suburb in Saudi Arabia,” In Reading Beyond…, edited by Fatma Mhmood and Bert De Jonghe. ^ 

“Architecture, Environment, Development: The United States and the Making of Modern Arabia, 1949-1961, ABE Journal [on line], 17 | 2020, date of publication 25 September 2020, retrieved 2 October 2020. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/abe/7963 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/abe.7963 ^ 

“HIDDEN SPACE | SOCIAL SPACE The Spatiality of Temporary Migration Between Home and Host Countries.” Magazine On Urbanism [MONU], 22, 2015. 

“From Domestic Housh to Consumer Mojama’a: The Social Space of Women in Kuwait.” Magazine On Urbanism [MONU], 21, 2014. 

Media Coverage

Social Media

Country Focus

United States; Jordan; Iraq; Syria; Saudi Arabia; Kuwait

Expertise by Geography

Middle East, United States

Expertise by Chronology

20th century

Expertise by Topic

Art & Architectural History, Environment, Urban History