Mekarem Eljamal

Mekarem Eljamal is a Doctoral Student in Urban Planning at Columbia GSAPP. Her current research looks into the political economy of “mixed cities” within Israel, with particular attention to how the discursive invocations and conceptualizations of the “mixed city” sit vis-à-vis the material realities of the city. Eljamal’s work draws heavily on settler colonial scholarship as she explores the ways in which the deployment of the mixed city classification intersects with questions of multiculturalism, right to the city, and citizenship. Eljamal has presented her research at the Middle East Studies Association Annual Meetings, as well as at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. While at Columbia, Eljamal has been a Teaching Assistant for courses on planning and urban history and theory. In addition to her doctoral work at Columbia, Eljamal is the Managing Editor for the Middle East Studies Pedagogy Initiative of the Arab Studies Institute and an Affiliate Editor for History@Work, the blog for the National Council on Public History.

Eljamal holds a Master of Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan, as well as a Master of Arts in Modern Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan. While at Michigan, she was a Graduate Fellow at the Weiser Center for Emerging Democracies. Eljamal’s thesis explored the continuities in the urban planning of Haifa by the British Mandate government and the early Israeli state. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and Modern Middle Eastern and North African Studies from the University of Michigan.

Prior to starting her PhD at Columbia, Eljamal worked as a Program Assistant at both the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies and the International Institute at the University of Michigan. There she assisted area studies centers in their successful Title VI National Resource Center grant applications. Eljamal also worked as a research staff member with Mada al-Carmel in Haifa.