Anwar Jabar

“Saïd Foundation gave me a life-changing opportunity to come to Cambridge in 2013 for my master studies, a journey that will soon finish with a PhD degree. This opportunity exposed me to an incredible environment of a world-leading and interdisciplinary research and allowed me to realise my full potential not only as a scholar, but also as a Palestinian and the responsibility that lies on my shoulders to make my war-torn country a better place.”

Anwar Jaber is an architect born and raised in Jerusalem. Growing up in a conflict zone made her life constantly complicated by the political conditions in Palestine. As a result, her personal experience has had a profound impact on her and made her question the built environment she lived in. When she obtained a bachelor degree in Architectural Engineering from Birzeit University in Palestine, her research interests in the interplay between politics and architecture grew even further and led her to join Cambridge.

Anwar joined the Centre for Urban Conflicts Research (UCR), the Department of Architecture in Cambridge on a Churchill-Saïd Scholarship to complete an MPhil degree in Architecture and Urban Studies (2013-2014). A year later, she was awarded the Cambridge Trust Scholarship to complete her PhD in Architecture at UCR. Her research investigates processes of urban and architectural transformations in cities under critical ethno-national and socio-political conflicts. She focuses on meaning and change and the role that the architecture plays in such cities. Her PhD is supervised by Professor Wendy Pullan and investigates the current spatial developments in the Palestinian city of Ramallah under the state-building project and questions the nature of this development in relation to the national Palestinian struggle.

In Cambridge, she supervised two undergraduate courses on Divided cities and Islamic Architecture, co-edited Scroope 25 (the Cambridge Architecture Journal) and fully organized a conference. Before joining Cambridge, Anwar practiced as an architect and urban planner in Jerusalem where she focused on urban development in Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem. She has held professional internships and leadership trainings in the US, Germany, Jordan, Turkey, Morocco, France, Palestine, and the UK.