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Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge
1-5 Scroope Terrace, Cambridge CB2 1PX, UK
Giulia Carabelli
Educational Background and Experience:
BA and MA in History of Islamic Architecture at the Università Ca Foscari di Venezia (Italy) (2005), School of Oriental Languages and Cultures. Main fields of research: Armenian and Islamic medieval architecture.
Experience working with a UN-urbanism research project, Bauhaus Foundation, Dessau (Germany), 2006. The project aimed to investigate the ways in which the UN family operates in post-war areas with particular focus on urban planning issues. The project considered the ways in which transnational religious organisations were active in the process of rebuilding the city of Mostar in the aftermath of the war.
A Masters in Architecture at Goldsmiths College, University of London (2007). The Main field of research: calendars in the former Yugoslavia and contemporary Croatia and Serbia; how the calendar could be used as a tool in the process of selection and normalization of the official national history.
Working Title of Thesis:
Re(ad)dressing Mostar: Architecture and/of the everyday life
Abstract/Main Argument/Field of Enquiry:
As a result of the war, only a few municipalities in BiH remained ethnically diverse. Due to massive internal migrations and the high number of internal displaced persons (IDPs) the post-war configuration of urban centres in BiH is that of homogeneous territories ruled by an ethnic majority, Mostar represents one of the few post-war exception.
My ongoing research addresses two main problems; on the one hand it questions how the process of reconstruction has been envisioned and carried out at normative and legislative levels (urban planning policies) and on the other hand it looks at how people are living in the new Mostar and understanding/using the city (the everyday life). The main intent of this research is to approach the urban space as constructed both by political discourses and everyday practices in the attempt of combining ideological perspectives with ethnographic enquires. The method is to examine the ways in which the new urban infrastructures assimilate and reveal the spatial and social divisions of the post-war reality. This research understands the process of reconstruction not only as the positive way of building and re-building the city, but also in its negative meaning (not to build and not to re-build).
The reconstruction of the built environment and the reconstitution of urban life constitutes the main subjects of this investigation, therefore this enquiry will begin with an introductory examination of the category of space as well as the acknowledgement of the multifarious debates that construct ‘space’ as the main interlocutor for a broader interdisciplinary discourse which spans the fields of sociology as well as politics, geopolitics, architecture, urbanism and political philosophy. In particular it will critically discuss understandings of space as the lieu of different processes such as identity formation, community building, political and social interactions and negotiations and as the physical space where everyday urban practices can be performed.
Contact email address: gcarabelli01@qub.ac.uk
PhD students:
Anita Bakshi
Architecture, University of Cambridge (Nicosia)
Giulia Carabelli
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Mostar)
Monika Halkort
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Nahr el Bared refugee camp, Tripoli, Lebanon)
Konstantin Kastrissianakis
Architecture, University of Cambridge (Beirut)
Karl O'Connor
Politics, University of Exeter (Brussels, Nicosia and Beirut)
Linda Rootamm
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Berlin)
Kelsey Shanks
Politics, University of Exeter (Kirkuk)
Affiliated Graduates
Annie Kane-Horrigan
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Belfast)
Brendan Browne
Sociology, Queens University Belfast (Ramallah/Belfast)