The Lab of Spaces-in-Transition
Current project: Wheat inSecurity in the Global South
Book: A Territory in Conflict: Eras of Development and Urban Architecture in Gaza (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025)
https://upittpress.org/books/9780822948452/
My professional expertise as an architect and academic career as an architectural historian have culminated in establishing the Lab of Spaces-in-Transition at Tel Aviv University. My research centers on architecture in colonial and postcolonial conflict zones in the Global South, with a focus on the spatial materialization of forced migration and cross-cultural mobilities of people, objects, knowledge and commodities (including .crops), economic aid development and humanitarianism—all foregrounding the subaltern in communicating history
After my graduation in 2007, I joined the faculty of Architecture and Town Planning of the Technion – IIT (Haifa, Israel), where completed my M.Sc. The Architecture of the Palestinian 'Refugee Camps' in the West Bank: Dheisheh Refugee Camp as a case study, 1948-1967 and Ph.D Architecture in Conflict beyond the Green Line: Gaza and Yamit Cities 1967-1982, with outstanding distinctions in 2011 and 2018, respectively. Between 2019 and 2021, I joined the Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at ETH-Zürich, Switzerland, under the Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design (Prof. Tom Avermaete, head)
I have been recognized by several prestigious awards including Graham Foundation on Book Publication; The Neubauer Postdoctoral Fellowship; The Planning an Budgeting Committee (VATAT) Postdoctoral Fellowship for Arabs; The Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship; 1st Prize of Arthur Schragenheim Memorial Fund Award for outstanding in Ph.D thesis; SAH Opler Membership for Emerging Scholars; Azrieli Foundation Travelling Award, ; Bernard Osher Doctoral Fellowship; Miriam and Arron Gutwirth Memorial Excellence Award; The Irwin and Joan Jacobs Excellence Scholarship; Robert A. Stewart Doctoral Fellowship; The Gerhard and Gertrude Karplus Memorial Prize Fund for excellence in M.Sc thesis; Azrieli Foundation Award and Scholarship for Master students; America-Israel Culture Foundation Excellence Scholarship
My work has been published as a book, as well as in leading peer-reviewed journals and book chapters
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. A Territory in Conflict: Eras of Development and Urban Architecture in Gaza, (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025).
The sole-authored book is written against the continuous dehumanization of the Gaza Strip and the making of its land as an object of violence. It is the first study to tell the architectural and urban history of Gaza from a Global South, Cold War-development discourse. The book provides a solid basis for the proposed research, as it explores the ways in which the 1947 partition of Palestine and subsequent demarcation of the Gaza Strip deprived the Gaza region of its primary natural and economic resources. The book highlights how the Gaza Strip became a contested arena of humanitarianism, development and settler colonialism through colonization, probing the power of architecture in conflict zones to illustrate the agency of refugees
I have co-edited a special issue "Colonial Pasts, Alternative Futures: Cultural Dynamics of Climate Change Resettlement and Inhabitation in the Global South", Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space (with Irit Katz)
Peer-reviewed journals and book chapters
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “Technologies of Life-making in the British Refugee Camps of the Southern Levant. Journal of Refugee Studies, 2025, feaf046, https://doi.org/10.1093/jrs/feaf046
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Katz, Irit. (2026). "Climate change resettlement and inhabitation: Spatialising cultures of colonial pasts and alternative futures in the Global South". Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 9(1), 3-14.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Petros Phokaides, 2025. “Living in and with Ruins: Decolonizing Spatial Pedagogies in Territories of Conflict.” City, 29(3–4), 2025: 597–614. doi:10.1080/13604813.2025.2517459
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “Militarized Urbanism in the Cold War Era: The Resettlement of the Refugees in Khan Younis.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 41(6), 2023: 1079-1095.
Katz, Irit and Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “Heritagization of Refugee Camps” in I. Saloul, B. Baillie (eds.), The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict,2925, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61493-5_101-1
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “In the name of Belonging: Developing Sheikh Radwan for the Refugees in Gaza City, 1967-1982.” In Making Home(s) in Displacement: Critical Reflections on a Spatial Practice. eds., Luce Beeckmans, Alessandra Gola, Ashika Singh, Hilde Heynen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2022). pp.113-135
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Avermaete, Tom. “Concrete Conflicts: The Vicissitudes of an Ordinary Material in Modernizing Gaza City.” Journal of Urban History, 48(5), 2022: 1159-1173.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona. “Mediterraneanism in Conflict: Development and Settlement of Palestinian Refugees and Jewish immigrants in Gaza and Yamit.” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 44 (6), 2021: 987-1007.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona. “The Right to an Urban History: The Gaza Master Plan, 1975–1982.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 39(2), 2020: 254-270.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona. “Being Citizens of the City of Gaza: The resettlement of the Al-Shati Refugee Camp at Sheikh Radwan, 1967-1982”, Citizenship Studies 24, no. 8, (2020): 1030-1046
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Nitzan-Shiftan Alona. “’De-Camping’ through Development: The Palestinian Refugee Camps in Gaza, 1967–1982.”, in Camps Revisited: Multifaceted Spatialities of a Modern Political Technology, eds., Irit Katz, Diana Martin, and Claudio Minca, (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018), 137-157
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “The Palestinian Refugee Camps: The Promise of ‘Ruin’ and ‘Loss.’” Rethinking History Journal19(1), 2014: 72-94.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “Open Gaza: Architecture of Hope, edited by Michael Sorkin and Deen Sharp”, Journal of Palestine Studies, 51 (1), 1-2, 2022.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees” (Published by Oxford University Press), by Lamis E Abdelaaty, Ethnic and Racial Studies, (2024). DOI: 10.1080/01419870.2024.2304087
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Ben-Arie, Ronnen. "To Be at Home", in Nihilism and the State of Israel: New Critical Perspectives, eds., Nitzan Lebovic and Roy Ben-Shai, (New York: Continuum Publishing Corporation, 2014), 205-226
Other Publications
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina and Katz, Irit. “Sandi Hilal”, In: The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Women in Architecture, 1960-2015, Lori Brown and Karen Burns (eds.),
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina*; Nitzan-Shiftan, Alona. "Transformative Destruction in Gaza City: 1967-1982". Entangled Histories, Multiple Geographies, (EAHN, Belgrade 2015), 48-53.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina*; Ben-Arie, Ronnen. “Recreating the Public through Transformation”, Metamorphosis, The Continuity of Change (Docomomo, Slovenia, 2018), 96-100.
Abreek-Zubiedat, Fatina. “Gaza and the Right of Urban History” , Social History blog; Haaretz Newspaper, October 28, 2021, https://www.haaretz.co.il/blogs/sadna/BLOG-1.10329093
