“Abu Dhabi (dis)connected” - Exhibition Launch and Seminar Presentation

This weekend was really special to our Research Team and me personally.

Our London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and Abu Dhabi University (ADU) joined research project (managed by LSE Middle East Centre and funded by the Emirates Foundation), called: "Roads as tools for (dis)connecting cities and neighborhoods: a sociospatial study of Abu Dhabi", is approaching its completion. Whilst several academic output has already been achieved and plenty more will follow, the idea of a photography exhibition that would visualize the intricate context of Abu Dhabi (and the Gulf in general) and disseminate part of the project experience was there since its inception.

In this light, we were extremely proud and happy to launch a photography/videography/mapping/arts exhibition and present a glimpse of our work at a Seminar, last weekend (March 10th) at the LSE.

At first, the Seminar took place at the Centre Building of the LSE. Philipp Rode - Executive Director of LSE Cities and Associate Professorial Lecturer at the School of Public Policy - chaired the Session, with Alexandra Gomes, Apostolos Kyriazis and Peter Schwinger following with presentations (Clémence Montagne, the fourth member of the Research Team was missing with the greatest of reasons!). The presentations explored some of the dimensions that are emerging from a car infrastructure led expansion in Abu Dhabi: How did historical decisions lead to car-centric development? How has the road network affected the city and its residents? What is the impact of car-centric development? An interesting Q&A session ended the Seminar.

Later on, a small launch event of our project Exhibition took place at the LSE Old Building’s Atrium. The exhibition was curated by Kara Blackmore and showcased photographs and maps taken/created by the Research Team, including eight students of Architecture at ADU (Nour Al Ali, Haya Al Baiti, Juman Sebai, Hiba Syed, Nashmia Mehek, Ummama Nadeem, Rufa Goltay and Dana Ali). The photographs depict selected perspectives, scales and conditions of the Abu Dhabi streetscapes: The mega-scale, infrastructure, emptiness, connection and disconnection, climate, night, people. They were accompanied by urbanscape videos, quotes from citizens and archival maps.

On behalf of the research team, apart from all people already mentioned, I would like to warmly thank Kendall Livingston (LSE Middle East Centre) for managing the whole project and orchestrating this double event, her assistant Eiman Shahin for all the priceless help, Michael Mason (LSE Middle East Director) for his support on our research vision and everyone else that contributed to the implementation of this event (including ADU’s Research Office for streamlining our requests, and more particularly Prof. Philip Hamill and his assistant Sana Khan).

The Exhibition will remain open until the end of March 2023.
For more on the event: https://www.lse.ac.uk/Events/2023/02/20230227vATR/Abu-Dhabi-Disconnected
For more on the Research Project: https://www.lse.ac.uk/middle-east-centre/research/collaboration-programme/2020-21/alexandra-gomes