The School of Architecture at Syracuse University is expanding with the addition of five new faculty members this fall.
Eliana Abu-Hamdi, Ph.D. has been named Associate Dean for Research, while Ivi Diamantopoulou will serve as Assistant Teaching Professor of Architecture and Director of the New York City Architecture Program beginning Fall 2022.
Iman Fayyad and Linda Zhang also join the faculty as tenure-track Assistant Professors and Lily Chishan Wong has been named the School’s Harry der Boghosian Fellow for 2022–23.
Eliana Abu-Hamdi, Ph.D. joins the School in the newly-created Associate Dean for Research (ADR) position where she will lead strategic efforts to promote and increase scholarship, creative work, and sponsored research; assist in cultivating faculty research projects; and work to develop innovative, collaborative and entrepreneurial initiatives within the School of Architecture.
As an experienced architectural practitioner and educator, Abu-Hamdi recently joined the Board of Directors of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH), as well as the Society for American City and Regional Planning History (SACRPH). Before coming to Syracuse, she was the Project Manager for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC)—an Andrew W. Mellon global humanities research grant, housed in the Architecture Department at MIT—and was a Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute. Abu-Hamdi also taught courses on Global Poverty, the Ethics of Development, and the History of Urbanism and Global Cities at Hunter College in Manhattan, and Global Urbanism at Boston Architectural College.
An urbanist, designer, and Middle Eastern/Global South scholar, Abu-Hamdi’s work has been published in a number of journals and edited volumes. Her research on architecture and development in Jordan contributes to the debates on the political economy of urbanism in developing cities, thereby establishing a connection between their geopolitical histories and urban present.
Abu-Hamdi received her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in Architectural History from UC Berkeley with a designated emphasis in Global Metropolitan Studies, as well as a Master of Architecture degree from the NewSchool of Architecture and Design.
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Eliana Abu-Hamdi joined SAH initially in 2015. She served as a session chair at the 2019 and 2022 annual conferences and as a speaker at the 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021 annual conferences. She is a co-chair of the SAH Globalizing Architectural History Education Affiliate Group and currently serves on the SAH Board of Directors and as the SAH Affiliate Group Liaison.
