Asmaa Elgamal

Doctoral Candidate

Asmaa is a doctoral candidate in international development at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. Her work straddles the fields of development, planning, and security studies, with a focus on the politics of conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. Her dissertation project explores the interactions between colonial history, security politics and knowledge production within land planning agencies in colonial Morocco, as well as their impact on the institutional infrastructure and contemporary practices of the post-independence state. 

Prior to her doctoral studies, Asmaa was a development practitioner in Cairo, Egypt, where she worked for a number of local and international development organizations. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and Journalism from the American University in Cairo and a M.Sc. in Population and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.