Asmaa is a Hicham Alaoui Postdoctoral Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She received her PhD in International Development and Planning from MIT in June 2023.
Asmaa’s work straddles the fields of development, urban planning, and security studies, with a focus on the politics of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. Her current book project explores the interactions between colonial history, security politics and knowledge production within land planning agencies in colonial Morocco, as well as their impact on the institutional infrastructure and contemporary practices of the post-independence state.
Prior to her doctoral studies, Asmaa was a development practitioner in Cairo, Egypt, where she worked for a number of local and international development organizations. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Journalism from the American University in Cairo and a M.Sc. in Population and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Research Interests: development planning; militarism and securitization; colonial history; politics of knowledge production; conflict and peace building; environmental history; historical ethnography; and politics of Middle East and North Africa