#  Meet the 2020-21 Fellows in Conflict and Peace: Salem Al Qudwa 

 



 Al Salamu Alikum,

 My name is Salem, and I am a Palestinian architect. I was born and brought up in Benghazi, Libya, where I spent the first 18 years of my life. After my high school, I travelled and lived in India for three years. By tracing back this journey while living between Libya and India during the first half of my life, I really enjoyed being with that collective of talented and interesting religious beliefs. After my journey in India, I returned to Palestine to study Architectural Engineering.

 As an Emergency Architect and Consultant with more than 15 years of experience, I participated in writing grant proposals and helped manage several reconstruction projects ranging from primary healthcare clinics and schools to the rehabilitation of houses for families living in marginalized and rural areas in the Gaza Strip. Using my artistic design skills, I also continued to work as a university lecturer teaching foundational and advanced architectural design, landscape design, and interior architecture.

 My fellowship project, ‘The Troubled Everyday in/of Gaza: Restoring Agency and Creative Possibility,’ will further strive to improve spatial design practice in other conflict areas such as Syria, Iraq, and Libya. My proposed research rethinks the implications of ‘everyday spaces’ for urban as well as rural social patterns in the post-conflict reconstruction process. This will challenge conventional attitudes toward home reconstruction by emphasizing how architecture not only provides a sense of stability, peace, and protection from conflict, but also restores human agency, which in turn finds expression in a variety of creative forms.

 During my Fellowship with the Religion, Conflict, and Peace Initiative, in Harvard University, I am looking forward to asking more hard questions, to take my leadership and capacities to higher levels. This in the aim of making a difference and social impact in areas inhabited by communities in need and affected by the Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, Palestine.

 Related links:

- [Interview with Salem Al Qudwa, an architect from Gaza](https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/videos/2015/2/27/interview-with-salem-al-qudwa-an-architect-from-gaza/1/), Araby al Jaded, 2015
- [Media interview, Salem Al Qudwa, PhD by Design Researcher](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8fYsbI8TPiY), Oxford Brookes, 2017
- [Salem Al Qudwa, PhD by Design Researcher](https://www.brookes.ac.uk/templates/pages/staff.aspx?uid=p0077924), Oxford Brookes University