The City as a World in Common? Contested Reconstruction, Syncretic Place-Making and Urban Memory in Beirut and Beyond

This event is co-organized with the project Beyond Sacred/Secular Cities - Exploring Politics of Memory, Space, and Religion in Middle Eastern Nationalisms.

Gruia Bădescu is a Research Fellow at the Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and was a lecturer and research associate at the University of Oxford. In 2018 he joined Konstanz as a Balzan Prize and Alexander von Humboldt fellow hosted by Jan and Aleida Assmann. His research examines how societies deal with difficult pasts through spatial practices, investigating the relationship between architectural reconfigurations and memory. One focus of his research is urban post-war reconstruction, particularly in the former Yugoslavia and the Levant.  His publications have examined urban memory in post-war and post-authoritarian contexts. He is a co-editor of the volume `Synchronous Pasts: Transforming heritage in the former Yugoslavia´ (2021) and he is now completing a monograph tracing the relationship between architectural reconstruction and dealing with the past in the 20th century. At the Zukunftskolleg, he leads a research group on cities after political ruptures.  He is the co-convener of the Memory, Space and Place working group of the Memory Studies Association.

Hybrid Seminar

The talk is held at CMES, Finngatan 16 in Lund. If you are not able to attend in-person, there is an option to attend via Zoom. Please register here for Zoom attendance: https://lu-se.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5YtcOyvqD8tG9T7CsInU0of_xOGDUJr…