https://www.hamdanali.com/home daily 1.0 2021-06-04 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/t/5e76801e7531ce4dfe294163/1584824358761/IMG_5557.JPG Home Ali Nehme Hamdan, PhD I am a Post-Doctoral Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. I am a specialist in political geography with a regional focus on the Middle East. My research offers a critical approach to the changing geographies of war, focusing on the role of refugees as actors. https://www.hamdanali.com/about daily 0.75 2020-09-08 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/t/5e6fbc1efa0fef69063442c1/1599561465150/IMG_5568.jpg About - About My name is Ali Hamdan, and I am a specialist in political geography with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. I have extensive field experience working and studying in the region, particularly in Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, and Turkey, and am passionate about using qualitative methods to contribute to interdisciplinary discussions about the changing nature of political violence, forced migration, and world politics in the 21st century. I am currently a Post-Doctoral Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor of Geography. I am an inaugural member of the Mount Vernon Society of Fellows and visiting scholar with the Institute for Middle East Studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs. My research centers on the geographical processes of civil wars, focusing on actors who connect places at war to places “at peace".” In my dissertation research, I explored the exile geopolitics of refugees from Syria’s war, and am beginning work on a project investigating the role of international development contractors (IDCs) in shaping US foreign policy abroad. As such, my scholarly and pedagogical interests include the study of borders and migration, the role of non-state actors in world politics, and representations of conflict zones in geopolitical discourse, in particular in the Middle East. PhD (Geography), University of California - Los Angeles, 2019 MA (Geography), University of California - Los Angeles, 2013 BA (Geography), Middlebury College, 2010 https://www.hamdanali.com/research daily 0.75 2020-09-15 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/t/5e713c30e0ca5a670cd7f417/1584479282153/DhwpfiPVQAAbF2T.jpg Research - What are the geographic dynamics of contemporary war? My research begins from the insight that war is a process, not an event or outcome. As such, war does not only destroy, but also transforms social relations, spatial forms, and practices of meaning-making in the places it touches. I am also motivated by critical questions about what kind of actors are involved in these processes - and to what ends. Writing from critical political geography, my scholarship works to disrupt the assumption that violence is a fact of life in particular places, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/t/5e77a185c54f956f5667eeda/1584898452021/Aro%2BHa_0387.jpg Research In Syria’s war, the changing geographies of violence, war economies, and displacement shape the nature and future of politics in Syria. War has already left powerful material traces of its passing across the country, but it has also transformed the socio-spatial relations of Syria and its borderlands, as I sketch out in the figure above. Whereas most research focuses on front lines, my research works to move beyond territorial conceptions of civil war to glimpse transnational processes shaping the conflict. Focusing here on Syria’s Northwest, we can see how opposition actors do not simply “control” territory, but seek to govern it through a set of spatial relations that link places like exile-capitals, inner frontiers, IDP camps, and border crossings to conceptions of these relations as composing “Liberated Territories.” https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/t/5e70392030d794130044e49d/1584821407757/img_3974.jpg Research - Conferences I’ve shared my research at a wide variety of scholarly meetings. These include AAG, MESA, BRISMES, etc… A full list can be found on my C.V. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e713d0bc53bc84841ee60ad/1584479500704/AAG-logol.png Research https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e713d0ba729924bbada09de/1584479500597/MESA-Logo-Standard%401x.png Research https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e713d574aa9943cca3eb134/1584479577552/Brismes_2017_1.jpg Research https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e7140624aa9943cca3f79a6/1584480357048/Full-MEC-Logo.jpg Research https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e714115c55abe69543b3927/1584480535502/e7e975_b600a9ef38ac4cffb87dd2a289088a9d%7Emv2.gif Research https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e714199cdf3f758f6658ca3/1584480666681/ssrc.png Research https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e77da750df723159b28ddd7/1584913016566/IFPO-removebg-preview.png Research https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/5e713cee53b8872f4351a8f9/5e77dae264f35a2e28884153/1584913132555/cropped-Logo.png Research https://www.hamdanali.com/teaching daily 0.75 2020-09-08 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/t/5e6fc7d4fa0fef690636f3f8/1584387931842/a35dd2fc89098aafa8dd9ab242f43ffd.jpg Teaching - Linking Knowledge to Experience The vibrant media landscape of the 21st century opens up a number of opportunities for connecting abstract concepts to how students encounter politics in their lived experience. Drawing on a range of platforms, my syllabi integrate public debates unfolding outside of the classroom through different forms of media while connecting them to deeper questions at the heart of how we discuss conflict, refugees, and world politics. For instance, in Nationalism & Geopolitics in the Everyday, I introduce students to methods like discourse analysis and semiology. I give students the opportunity to “test out” these methods on political speeches, before as a class we apply them to Marvel films (most recently, Captain America: The Winter Soldier). Doing so encourages a sharper, more engaged discussion of how students grapple with different ideas about world order, state-citizen relations, heroism, gender, and race that pervade the media they encounter. In A World at War, I link different philosophical conceptions of war to empirical case studies, ethnographic accounts, through which they must analyze the classic 1966 film The Battle of Algiers. Students also grapple with the practical implications of the US drone program by composing either a policy brief or an op-ed article in which they adopt and defend a position on the use of drones in US foreign policy. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5e69290f986c7010333f90e4/t/5e6fc7403b411409572b629e/1599561492534/IMG_20161203_160541805_HDR.jpg Teaching - Critique in Service of Compassion The United States may be increasingly diverse, but Americans increasingly self-segregate by class, by political affiliation, and by racial background (among others) at the neighborhood and national scales. I view the university campus as a crucial opportunity for students to encounter and engage with individuals from different backgrounds. My teaching thus works to expose students to perspectives they might not otherwise encounter in a spirit of compassion, encouraging learning that goes deeper than individual benefit to contemplating one’s place in the world. To that end I draw on readings from scholars and thinkers of color, women, and other under-resourced or under-represented groups in my classes. I also make use of popular media - in particular, film and documentaries - to introduce such perspectives to students in easy-to-grasp, narrative forms. For instance, I draw on the recent documentary Wounds of Waziristan to expose students to daily life for Afghans living under US drone strikes. In other classes, I make use of refugee testimonies. In sum, the geographer in me hopes to reveal the political entanglements that bring problems “out there” into relation with students’ lives in the Global North.