Feras Hammami
About Feras Hammami
Currently employed as associate professor at the Department of Conservation, GU. Before that I worked as researcher and teacher (2015-2016) at the same department, and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship (2013-2014) in critical heritage studies – the working name of the priority research area on cultural heritage initiated in 2010 at GU. I received my PhD in Planning and Decision Analysis from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH, 2005-2012). My PhD thesis, entitled “Heritage in Authority-Making”, explored the transnational spaces of heritage management, focusing on the power dynamics that through heritage trascend societal development in Palestine, Botswana and Sweden.
Research areas
My research concerns the politicisation of heritage and its entangelment in social conflicts and resistance in cities: the ways heritage and urban resistance are entageled in negotiating the critical questions of security, identity, sense of place, recognition, memory and "representation"; and the new possibilities that heritage can offer for reconciliation and peacebuilding.
I have three ongoing research projects.
1. URBAN MARGINALITY AND RESISTANCE IN CONTEMPORARY FRAGMENTED CITIES will investigate the role that ‘heritage’ can play in originating and appropriating various forms of urban change and marginality. The project is funded by the Swedish National Heritage Board, and will run from 2017 to 2019 (RAÄ, Feras Hammami, project leader).
Cities are constantly being transformed, physically and socially due to urbanization, migration and other forms of societal changes. Changes in urban density, proximity, mobility, temporality and diversity can result in significant impact on people’s social networks, commons and place attachment. These changes are often debated as inevitable and vital for modernisation and progress. However, several scholars explain the various forms of marginality such changes can produce. People may become excluded, alienated or displaced following issues of income, ethnicity, class and territoriality. This project sheds light on how heritage-led forms of urban marginality may also occur when ignoring or assimilating the multiple layers of history, cultures and representations that characterise cities, and how this can encumber any attempt to realise equal and sustainable cities.
The project departs from the argument that a process of ‘heritageisation’ has since the 19th century been defining our valuable past and desired future. This process favours the physical heritage, experts’ knowledge, single representation of the past, and the experiences of ruling and upper-middle classes. It is also asserted in this project that an overlooked relationship exists between urbanisation and heritageisation, and this relationship has resulted in authoritative representations of the past in urban policy discourses and documents. These arguments and assertions will be investigated in relation to the urbanisation processes in Gothenburg to uncover the role that ‘heritage’ may play in appropriating urban change and marginality, and thereby contribute to the current debates on ‘inclusive heritage’ and ‘equal and sustainable cities’.
A critical heritage approach urban change and marginality will be used to investigate: - How do urbanisation processes in places with multiple layers of history authorise specific layers at the expense of others, and thus result in “vertical” forms of marginalities? - How do urbanisation processes in places used by multi-cultural communities favour the protection of the historic traces and physical expressions of specific cultures at the expense of others, and thus cause “horizontal” forms of marginality. - How can heritage play a potential role in going beyond the traditional vertices of urban marginality––class, ethnicity, state––and expand the meaning of urbanisastion towards identity, memory and place attachment? - How can rethinking “marginality” in relation to heritage offer new knowledge on “inclusion” in the making of heritage and cities?
The project contributes to current debates about “new inclusive cultural heritage policy that hold Sweden together” (Kulturdepartmentet, 2016-03-22) and “Jämlikt Göteborg–Hela staden social hålbar” (Göteborgs Stad 2016). Inclusion in these debates seems to be limited to the "inclusion of people’s different perspectives on Swedish heritage” (Kulturdepartmentet 2016). This project will challenge this conception by promoting new dialogues on 'heritage' as plural and open to multiple and changing claims and interpretations. This suggests a new understanding of 'inclusion' beyond assimilation and single representation. The idea is to move towards a new meaning of 'inclusion' that promotes ‘plural heritages in Sweden’, and a shift from “what does heritage mean?” to “what does it do?”. The relevance of this project exists in its capacity to enhance these shifts and help challenge the traditional divide in vision between heritage and planning practices. A trans-disciplinary approach that dwells on critical heritage, urban and resistance studies will be used to explore the overlooked relationship between heritageisation and urbanisation that helps - appropriate urban change and its associated identity contestations - explain the management of marginality as a matter of socio-political distribution and symbolic power - help see the social responses to marginality as reaction to physical displacement, to economic unaffordability, self-interest - help overlook people’s right to heritage, representation, social networks - fail any attempt to disconnect policies of urban development and heritage management from the dominant singular representations of the past - and sustain a limited capacity in these policies when addressing the impact of urban change on people’s identities and narratives.
These explorations will offer new knowledge on heritage, inclusion and marginality, and thus reveal the role heritage can play in making cities equal and sustainable. The case is the suburb Gamlestaden, located eastern of the city of Gothenburg. The built environment of Gamlestaden is situated over the ruins of Nya Lödöse (1473-1624). These ruins are currently uncovered by massive archaeological excavations that seek to integrate that history in the new development, including a new shopping centre, offices and housing. Interviews, focus group workshops, participant observation and photographic documentation, will be used to explore the impacts of the development on: the social, cultural and spatial fabrics; the multiple layers of history; today’s quality of life; and the expressions of the 1474-1624 history of Nya Lödöse and today’s multicultural Gamlestaden in the urban change.
The project will begin in Jan 2017, and end in Dec 2019.
2. RECONCILIATORY HERITAGE: Reconstructing Heritage in a Time of Violent Fragmentations in collaboration with six scholars from the university of Gothenburg, funded by the Swedish National Research Council (VR; 2017-2020; Michael Lanzelius at URBSEC, project leader). In this project we will look at the surge of social conflicts that have erupted worldwide during the last decades and investigate the ways heritage sites have become targets as well as arenas for struggles over memories and identities, authority and superiority. In specific, we are interested in exploring the ways various claims and forms of contestations in conflicts are deeply entangled in questions that pertain to a heritage-and-security nexus (ranging from personal to state security; from personal to state heritage). This project is expected to help us uncover the possibilities that heritage may offer for reconciliation in our present violently fragmented world, and based on this, to contribute a ‘state-of-the-art’ assessment and suggestions for guidelines regarding how such reconciliatory possibilities can be implemented in practical work. The project is organized in a number of working packages and cases studies. I will look at how the contested religious shrine, which is known for Muslims as Ibrahimi Mosque and for Jews and Christians as the Tomb of the Patriarchs, has become a vehicle for violent conflict and what potentials it might still have for reconciliation.
3. HERITAGE AND URBAN RESISTANCE: exploring identity politics, commons and conflict. This project is carried out through collaboration with School of Design and Crafts (GU), and School of Design Strategies, Parsons the New School for Design in New York, and funded by the Swedish National Heritage Board (RAÄ, Feras Hammami, project leader). It investigates the ways heritage and urban resistance, both as concepts and as empirical realities for people on the ground, are fundamentally interdependent and constitute multiple sites of conflict. We analyze these interdependencies in Sweden, Turkey and Palestine with the aim to activate a new dialogue on the role of heritage authorities in the making of contemporary societies.
Research interests - Heritage and resistance - Conflict heritage - The heritage of war and its legacieis - Heritage as spaces of struggles - Uses of heritage for peacebuilding - Politics of identity and sense of place in cities - Urbanisation and heritageisation - Palestine, Sweden, Botswana, Turkey and many others (to come)
-
Heritage, Conflict, War and
Peace(building)
Feras Hammami
Cultural Heritage Day, Center for Critical Heritage Studies, and Kulturarvsakademin (KAS), GU. - 2023 -
Rupture in heritage: strategies of dispossession, elimination and
co-resistance
Feras Hammami
Settler Colonial Studies - 2022 -
Heritage and peacebuilding: Challenges, possibilities and sustainable
practices
Feras Hammami, D. C. Harvey, D. Laven, D. Walters
Routledge Handbook of Sustainable Heritage - 2022 -
'Cleaning up' heritage in the post-industrial city: Making heritage, gentrification and legitimacy in
Gamlestaden
Feras Hammami, C. Valli
Heritage, Gentrification and Resistance in the Neoliberal City - 2022 -
Introduction: Exploring injustices through heritage in the neoliberal
city
Feras Hammami, Daniel Jewesbury, C. Valli
Heritage, Gentrification and Resistance in the Neoliberal City - 2022 -
Methodological Insights Within the Intersection of Heritage and Resistance
Research
Feras Hammami
Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance - 2022 -
The Epistemic Work of Decolonization and Restitution: A Critical
Conversation
Ciraj Rassool, Evren Uzer, Feras Hammami
Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance - 2022 -
Heritage and Resistance: Theoretical
Insights
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance - 2022 -
Linking Heritage to
Resistance
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance - 2022 -
Fighting Denial of the Right to the Past: Heritage-Backed Bodily Resistance and Performance of Refugeeism and
Return
Feras Hammami
Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent Resistance - 2022 -
Theorizing Heritage through Non-Violent
Resistance
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
2022 -
Epilogue: Reflections on Heritage, Gentrification,
Resistance
Daniel Jewesbury, Feras Hammami, Chiara Valli
Heritage, Gentrification and Resistance in the Neoliberal City - 2022 -
Heritage, Gentrification and Resistance in the Neoliberal
City
Feras Hammami, Daniel Jewesbury, Chiara Valli
2022 -
The Scopic Feast of Heritage and the Invention of Unthreatening Diversity in Neoliberal
Cities
Feras Hammami
Heritage - 2021 -
Introducing Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in Sweden: A social justice
appraisal
C. Valli, Feras Hammami
European Urban and Regional Studies - 2021 -
Planning theories from ‘southern turn’ to ‘deeply rooted/situated in the South/context’: A project in the
making
Feras Hammami, Chandrima Mukhopadhyay, Vanessa Watson
plaNext–Next Generation Planning - 2021 -
Reviewing Neighborhood Sustainability Assessment Tools through Critical Heritage
Studies
Luciane Aguiar Borges, Feras Hammami, Josefin Wangel
Sustainability - 2020 -
Heritage for emancipation: a new call for the abolition of the settler colonial logic of
elimination
Feras Hammami
Cultural Stability or Conflict Symposium, Melbourne 31 January 2019 - 2019 -
The earth always wins: a new language of heritage-led abolition of
injustices
Feras Hammami
Symposium "Heritage and Conflict in the MENA Region. Cases from Aleppo, Beirut, Tunis, Hebron, and Acre". 28 October 2019, Cottbus, Germany - 2019 -
Heritage necropolitics and the capture of Hebron: The logic of closure, fear, humiliation and
elimination
Feras Hammami
Urban Heritage in Divided Cities: Contested Pasts. Mirjana Ristic, Sybille Frank (red.) - 2019 -
Rethinking urban justice from the authorized past: stories from the multicultural margin and
center
Feras Hammami, Chiara Valli
The Association of European Schools of Planning Annual Congress, Making Space for Hope - 2018 -
Precarious Return: the case of decolonising Nakba in
Palestine
Feras Hammami
Association of Critical Heritage Studies - 2018 -
Marginalisation and emerging spaces of hope between neoliberal urbanism and ‘inclusive heritage’ in
Gothenburg
Chiara Valli, Feras Hammami
The Association of European Schools of Planning Annual Congress, Making Space for Hope - 2018 -
The Great March of Return facing the Israeli settler colonial
control
Wassim Ghantous, Feras Hammami, Helena Lindholm Schulz
School of Blogal Studies: Making sense of the world. - 2018 -
Reconciliatory Heritage: Reconstructing Heritage in a Time of Violent
Fragmentations
Feras Hammami, David C Harvey
Association of Critical Heritage Studies - 2018 -
Crossing Borders with Hopeful Heritage: Quiet Encroachment towards Safe
Spaces
Feras Hammami, David C. Harvey
Association of Critical Heritage Studies - 2018 -
Heritage and resistance: irregularities, temporalities and cumulative
impact
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
International Journal of Heritage Studies - 2018 -
New Urban Imaginaries through heritage and
resistance
Feras Hammami
RC21 CONFERENCE 2017 “Rethinking Urban Global Justice”, September 11-13, Leeds, UK - 2017 -
Heritage and Urban Resistance: Exploring Identity Politics, Commons and
Conflict
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
2017 -
Rethinking heritage from peace: reflections from the Palestinian-Israeli
context
Feras Hammami, Daniel Laven
Heritage and Peacebuilding. Eds.: Diana Walters, Daniel Laven & Peter Davis - 2017 -
Reclaiming shared authority through heritage and
resistance
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
Creating the city: Identity, memory and participation - 2017 -
The Politics of Spatialising Shared Pasts in (post-) colonial and diaspora
times
Feras Hammami
IV World Planning Schools Congress. July 3-8th 2016, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilien. - 2016 -
Differences and connections: beyond universal theories in planning, urban, and heritage
studies
Nadia Caruso, Feras Hammami, Ender Peker, Simone Tulumello, Lauren Ugur
Urban Research and Practice - 2016 -
Heritage Inside Out: Uses of the Past to Reclaim the
City
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
World Planning Schools Congress - 2016 -
Issues of mutuality and sharing in the transnational spaces of heritage – contesting diaspora and homeland experiences in
Palestine
Feras Hammami
International Journal of Heritage Studies - 2016 -
plaNext: New Ideas and Perspectives on
Planning
Feras Hammami
plaNext-New Generation Planning - 2016 -
Heritage as Common(s) - Common(s) as
Heritage
Henric Benesch, Feras Hammami, Ingrid Martins Holmberg, Evren Uzer
2015 -
Keeping things in
common
Henric Benesch, Feras Hammami, Ingrid Martins Holmberg, Evren Uzer
Heritage as Common(s) - Common(s) as Heritage - 2015 -
Conservation, innovation and healing of the well-preserved medieval
Ystad
Feras Hammami
Urban Research and Practice - 2015 -
Geographies of Heritage and Heritage
Activism
Feras Hammami
7th International Conference of Critical Geography (ICCG) Precarious Radicalism on Shifting Grounds: Towards a Politics of Possibility. 26-30 July 2015, Ramallah, Palestine - 2015 -
New commons and new heritage: negotiating presence and
security
Feras Hammami
Heritage as Commons - Commons as Heritage. Henric Benesch, Feras Hammami, Ingrid Martins Holmberg, Evren Uzer (red.) - 2015 -
On the Entangled Paths of Urban Resistance, City Planning and Heritage
Conservation
Jeffrey Hou, Feras Hammami
plaNext - 2015 -
Politics of Emotion in Heritage
Works
Feras Hammami
Heritage and Healthy Societies: Exploring the Links among Cultural Heritage, Environment, and Resilience. University of Massachusetts Amherst, May 14-16, 2014 - 2014 -
Heritage and Peace-Building? Reflections from Nablus, Nazareth, and the Israeli-Palestinian
Conflict
Feras Hammami, Daniel Laven
2nd International Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies. Canberra, Australia, 2-4th December 2014 - 2014 -
Cities that talk: urban resistance as challenges for urban
planning
Nadia Caruso, Feras Hammami, Ender Peker, Simone Tulumello, Lauren Ugur
Urban Research and Practice - 2014 -
Understanding the cultural heritage landscapes in rural Palestine: Exploring local conceptions in the village of Dair
Ghassaneh
Feras Hammami, Christine Alloush
26th session of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape UNRAVELING THE LOGICS OF LANDSCAPE - 2014 -
Urban Resistance: New Heritage and Commons in Conflict
Situations.
Feras Hammami, Evren Uzer
2nd International Conference of the Association of Critical Heritage Studies - 2014 -
Calls for Academic Freedom: Reflections on Palestine and
Israel
Feras Hammami
Global Dialogue - International Sociological Association - 2013 -
Transnational Spaces of Heritage Politics - the Case of
Nablus
Feras Hammami
Peace Conference: Post Conflict, Cultural Heritage and Regional Development - 2013 -
Conservation Under Occupation: Conflictual Powers and Cultural Heritage
Meanings
Feras Hammami
Planning Theory & Practice - 2012 -
Culture and Planning for Change and Continuity in
Botswana
Feras Hammami
Journal of planning education and research - 2012 -
Heritage in Authority-Making: Appropriating Interventions inThree Socio-Political
Contexts
Feras Hammami
2012 -
Legitimation of interventions in historic city areas: the case of the well–preserved
Ystad
Feras Hammami
Communication and Planning conference organized by the Young Academics of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) - 2012 -
Conservation under Occupation in the Historic City of
Nablus
Feras Hammami
24th AESOP Annual Congress in Helsinki - 2010 -
Culture in Botswana Planning
System
Feras Hammami
IV Nordic Planning Research Symposium, Tromsø , Norway, August 13–15 - 2009