Situated Imaginaries is a network of scholars and practitioners acknowledging the urgency of active imagination in transforming current socio-political realities.

Welcome to Sit-Im.

And do not forget to follow us on Twitter to stay updated.

 

About

Mission Statement

Network of scholars and practitioners acknowledging the urgency of an active imagination in transforming current socio-political realities. We have the audacity to confront the way knowledge is currently being produced, validated and disseminated. We come together: geographers, media and culture scholars, historians, archaeologists, architects and spatial practitioners to examine problems and prospects from the Global South, not as a location but defined by a social, economic and political condition. We come together from North Africa, South and Eastern Europe, Latin America to advance alternatives for critical thought and practice.

Team

Dana Dolghin John Hanna  Marcia Hattori
Dana Dolghin is a historian and has worked at the intersection with critical theory on issues of politics and collective memory, focusing primarily on Eastern Europe. She has experience in public history, teaching and research. graduated from the Faculty of Architecture at Graz University of Technology in 2014. During his study years, he volunteered and worked with housing and shelter organizations in Zambia, Egypt and Brazil. In the past few years, he worked closely with contemporary art institutions in Graz and in Cairo. Hanna is a third year PhD candidate at the Chair History of Architecture and Urban Planning at Delft University of Technology, and a member of Border Conditions and Territories research group. His research project addresses the spatiality of urban conflicts, laying a special focus on everyday practices under conditions of armed violence in Beirut and Paris Márcia Lika Hattori is Brazilian and doctoral researcher at the Spanish National Research Council – CSIC. Márcia holds a bachelor degree in History, a specialization in Forensic Anthropology applied to Human Rights in Spain and a master´s degree in Archaeology at São Paulo University – USP. Her current research looks to understand how persists, in the bureaucracy and the management of dead bodies, the disappearance of people in São Paulo, Brazil by comparing the last dictatorship and the democratic period. She worked in museums and, for more than seven years, in different archaeology companies doing fieldwork, laboratory analysis, participatory inventories of cultural heritage and especially working in conflict areas, most of them related to environmental licensing. Since 2013, she has been working as a forensic archaeologist in the searches of disappeared people in Brazil, Peru, Spain and Portugal.
 
  Menna Agha Mela Zuljevic
  Menna Agha is a doctoral researcher in the architecture program at the University of Antwerp, she works under the umbrella of Henry Van der Velde research group. Menna Agha holds a Bachelor degree in architecture from Egypt and a master’s degree in Design from Germany. Her current research looks at the architecture’s role within contexts of involuntary resettlement. Menna Agha has work experience in fields of academia, development and architecture practice. She was a lecturer at the German University in Cairo, in addition to collaborating on several projects with development agencies. Menna is a third generation displaced Nubian (Fadidja), her research record shows a clear focus on Nubian and gender issues. Mela Zuljevic is a PhD student at the Faculty of Architecture & Arts, University of Hasselt, within the ‘Critical Heritage Studies and the Future of Europe’ (CHEurope) MSCA-ITN project. Her research focuses on the roles of design and heritage in relation to production and extraction of value in spatial planning and development. She previously studied at the University of Sarajevo, with a BA in Product Design and MA in Visual Communications. She worked as assistant professor at the ‘Dzemal Bijedic’ University of Mostar and collaborated with different art and cultural organizations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. With Abart collective, she developed multiple art-based and research projects focused on public space and memory in the city of Mostar in relation to its postwar division and reconstruction.
 
  Nermin ElSherif María Novas
  Nermin Elsherif is originally an urbanist from Cairo (Egypt) who ended up researching the internet as a space in Amsterdam. Her research project on the Other Maps of Egypt was awarded the DAAD-GERSS research grant in 2016. Her interest in following the counter-narratives of the past, and exploring the hidden and invisible archives, led her to explore social media as exhibitions of online-personas, where a specific event can be collectively curated through a set of hashtags or the circulation of some photos. Nermin is PhD candidate in Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture (UvA), an ERC of CHEurope, a Marie Sklodowska-Curie actions (MSCA) project. Her research “Sociotechnical Imaginaries of a Modern Past” investigates how the Egyptian middle-class subjects negotiate their online identities through mobilizing “the image” of the past as a resource over Facebook. María Novas is a Galician doctoral candidate in the architecture program at the Universidad de Sevilla in Spain and a guest researcher at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. She holds a MSc in architecture from the Universidade da Coruña. In addition, Novas holds master’s degrees in Applied Research in Feminist Studies (UJI) and Urban Regeneration (USC). During her work experience in the architectural field and as part of her academic research trajectory in the Universidad de Sevilla on ‘History of Architecture and Architectural Theory: Cultural Studies, Social Management, and the Creative City’, she has been involved in independent research and practice and international and situated collaborative projects. Moreover, Novas has collaborated with Galician public bodies and organisations on projects which deals with incorporating the critical eye of feminism into territories and systems of knowledge, as a question of social justice to improve the quality of the places we live in.

Continue reading “Team”

News

Call for Papers
Revisiting Hegemony
15 Oct 2020

In the framework of the past Workshop “Revising the Concept of Hegemony”, we invite authors to think how hegemony operates spatially, discursively, and institutionally. At the same time, they are invited to think through case studies, situations and contexts. Therefore, we particularly call for contributions that:

  • – look at how hegemony manifests through the material space and the politics of architecture, spatial planning and development,
  • – attend to how we talk about hegemony in relation to the temporal realm and collective memory and,
  • – reflect on how hegemony speaks to our current political paradigms of liberal democracy

We invite both short (3000 words) reflections on case studies or visual essays, as well as fully developed critical inquiries into the topic (7000-8000 words). We hope to produce a critically astute volume of analysis, contributions and reflections that address both a scholarly audience and a politically engaged public at large.

 Check the Call 

  

Masterclass with Sara Salem & Workshop
Revising the concept of Hegemony: Methodologies of Working with the Past in non-
Western contexts
30 Oct 2020

In the framework of Doctoral Schools, UHasselt – Hasselt University (in partnership with
Antwerp University, KU Leuven, and in collaboration with Sit-Im (www.sit-im.org) and TU Delft (History of Architecture and Urban Planning), organises a masterclass with Sara Salem, followed by a workshop on methodology with Sit-Im on October 30 th , 2020. We call for applications from PhD students and postdocs in arts, social sciences and humanities interested in the topic of hegemony in knowledge production and methods of historical research related to non-western perspectives. The morning session will be open to the public while the afternoon session is reserved for participants registered with the Doctoral Schools program (PhDs and postdocs applying via the Doctoral Schools of 5 Flemish universities). Both sessions will be organised online.

 Check the Call and the Full Program 

  

Workshop
The Stigma of “Underdevelopment” Under Heritage Production
11 Oct 2019

The inaugural project of Sit-Im took place in the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Enviroment at TU Delft. During one day, scholars from interdisciplinary backgrounds and different area studies further investigated how the stigma of underdevelopment works in heritage production.

Download The Full Program
Check the Workshop Report

 

Call for Papers
The Stigma of “Underdevelopment” Under Heritage Production
15 Aug 2019

The Network welcome papers that address the questions above for our upcoming workshop on October 11th 2019 The Stigma of “underdevelopment” Under Heritage Production. Please submit your abstracts of 350 words to contact@sit-im.org before August 15th 2019. Accepted participants will be notified by August 21st, and later asked to share a paper draft of 1000-2000 words with the participants before convening. Speakers are invited to discuss the papers during the workshop. Inquiries can be sent to John Hanna (j.m.k.k.hanna@tudelft.nl) and Dr. Jasmijn Rana (j.rana@fsw.leidenuniv.nl).

Download the Full Call for Papers

 

Inaugural Workshop
2-3 Feb 2019

The Network Held its first workshop on the 2-3 February 2019, The workshop took place in Amsterdam University Library, In which we drew guidelines for future endeavours. The workshop attendance included Dana Dolghin and Nermin El-Sherif (University of Amsterdam), John Hanna and Maria Novas (University of Sevile/University of Delft) Marcia Hattori (Basque Country University), Mela Zuljevic (University of Hasselt), and Menna Agha (University of Antwerp).