Africa and Middle East Teaching Fund Initiative awarded to Azadeh Mashayekhi and Barbara Lipietz
20 January 2025
UCL Teaching Fund to support a collaborative project: ‘Learning from Local Practices of City-Making: Thinking Through Participation in Research and Design - Insights from Cairo and London’

Image credit: MatHelium
Award and Collaboration
Dr Azadeh Mashayekhi and Professor Barbara Lipietz from The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (DPU) have been awarded funding from the Africa and Middle East Teaching Fund Initiative.
The initiative aims to establish a pedagogical collaboration between DPU and the Cairo based Built-Environment Institute for Applied Studies - Africa and Middle East (BIAS-AME), centring co-learning and co-design practices between universities/knowledge institutions and communities in Cairo and London.
BIAS-AME is a new education institute, emerging from a partnership between NGOs and urban practitioners - Megawra, 10 Tooba, and Mansour for Architecture and Conservation, regrouped as Tahayyuz Alliance. Its objective is to question and rethink current pedagogical approaches to the built environment in Africa, as an interdisciplinary field. Moving away from siloed educational models, this coalition aims to reorient towards an interdisciplinary learning approach that addresses historic and precarious urban landscapes, climate change and spatial justice in Africa and the Middle East.
Building capacity and knowledge
With the support of the UCL Global Engagement’s Teaching Initiative fund, a team from the DPU’s Urban Development Planning MSc programme and BIAS-AME will work together to:
- Interrogate situated collaborative action research practices: Share and exchange knowledge on local practices, placemaking, modes of governance, considering the contextual differences between the UK and Egypt.
- Worlding planning theory: Focus on Africa and the Middle East as a site of urban theorisation, building on BIAS-AME’s (and partners’) expertise and knowledge in the region.
- Develop comparative learning material: Identify potential sites and actors for further investigation and documentation as case studies to be incorporated into teaching materials, as part of comparative learning practices.
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