Hiba Bou Akar

Hiba Bou Akar teaches in the Urban Planning program at Columbia GSAPP. Her research focuses on planning in conflict and post-conflict cities, the question of urban security and violence, and the role of religious political organizations in the making of cities. Her For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers (Stanford University Press, 2018) won the 2019 Nikki Keddie Book Award and the 2019 Anthony Leeds Prize. At the Institute, Bou Akar will be working on “Sedimentary Urbanization,” an ethnographic and archival book project investigating how low-income Lebanese families and Syrian refugees access affordable housing in Beirut’s peripheries.