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Gehood Zateya: Governing Urban Water Access in Cairo

29 January 2025, 4:00 pm–6:00 pm

DPU

Join us for a Social Diversity Research Cluster DPU Dialogues in Development talk with Dr Noura Wahby and chaired by Dr Paroj Banerjee.

Event Information

Open to

All

Availability

Yes

Organiser

Alex Macfarlane

Location

Room 403
Senate House
Malet Street
London
WC1E 7HU

Extreme weather changes in the Middle East are mostly mitigated by state-led development, with a particular focus on the chronic lack or damaging abundance of water in particular. Despite of recent corporatization of water governance in the region, communities lie at the crux of water supply, maintenance, and quality. Marginalized communities have always developed their own methods of sustainable access to water, and especially in times of crisis like the Pandemic. Water governance operates as part of self-built networks in urban milieus; and is constructed through grassroots efforts, social capital, and heterogenous configurations of socio-technical relations. Negotiations between state, non-state actors and within communities determine how livelihoods are affected by water in/security such as food security, sanitation, and ultimately citizenship. My study explores how communities come together and/or compete to create networks of sustainable and localized efforts to guarantee access, supply, repair and maintenance of public commons such as water. This event will be chaired by Dr Paroj Banerjee.

About the Speaker

Noura Wahby

Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Administration & Director of Master of Public Administration at American University, Cairo

Noura Wahby is also a member of Freiburg University’s Young Academy for Sustainability (Germany) and a fellow at the Governance and Local Development Institute, University of Gothenburg (Sweden). Previous roles include- ESRC postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Geography; and PhD student at the Centre of Development Studies, both at the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research won the 2019 Malcolm H. Kerr Best Dissertation Award in Social Sciences from the Middle East Studies Association (USA).