Noura Wahby is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research at the Cambridge Centre of Development Studies focused on the political economy of urban development and urban waterscapes in Cairo, Egypt. Her doctoral dissertation won the 2019 Malcolm H. Kerr Best Dissertation Award in Social Sciences from the Middle East Studies Association in North America.
Her research focuses on the spatial politics of water governance to conceptualise everyday water practices and hydraulic citizenships. She explores the relational relationships between urban development, infrastructure formation and competing state-society relations. Her research interests include the urban commons, informality, water and political geography
Previously she worked at the Cambridge Centre of Smart Infrastructure looking at citizen engagement, digital technologies and local infrastructure in the UK. She has also worked in the Middle East as an international development consultant on diverse urban issues.
Recent Publications
- (Forthcoming) Dasgupta, S. and Wahby, N. “Reflections on an Emerging Urban Lexicon: Epistemology, Power and the Production of Knowledge”. Accepted Special Issue on Urban Lexicons of the Global South: Which Vocabulary Matters?, International Development and Planning Review.
- Nochta, T., Badstuber, N., & Wahby, N. (2019). On the Governance of City Digital Twins – Insights from the Cambridge Case Study. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.41083
- Wahby, N (2018). “Egyptian Environmentalism and Urban Grassroots Non-movements”, in Jose Vasquez and Elia Apostolopoulou (Eds.) The Right to Nature: Social Movements, Environmental Justice and Neoliberal Natures, Routledge-Earthscan, London, UK.
- Wahby, N (2017). “Urbanity and Populism in the Global South – Lessons for the Brexit-Trump Era”, City and Community, 16 (2), 139-144. Doi: 10.1111/cico.12234.
- Wahby, N (2015). “State and Community Dichotomies in Informal Areas: The Case of Infrastructure Upgrading in Izbit ElHaggana”, in Omar Bortolazzi (Ed.) Youth Networks, Civil Society and Social Entrepreneurship, Bologna University Press Publishing House, Italy.
- Wahby, N (2015). “The Race to the Global City: Who Gets Left Behind?” Cambridge Review of International Affairs Views, online publication- http://criaviews.org/the-race-to-the-global-city-who-gets-left-behind/
Editorial Roles
- Co-editor of the Middle East Urban Studies Book Series at the American University in Cairo Press. https://aucpress.com/
- Founder and editor of Arab Urbanism, an independent bi-lingual online platform dedicated to critical research and practice of urbanism in the Middle East and North Africa region. https://www.araburbanism.com/