Urban Studies & Spatial Practices Program

URBAN STUDIES AND SPATIAL PRACTICES PROGRAM 

Our Program 

Cities and Urban Spaces are a conglomerate of people, geographies, power relations and racial/ethnic identities. In our Urban Studies and Spatial Practices Program, we explore cities and urban Spaces through different lenses and scales, with a focus on violence, mobility, development/de-development, lifestyles, and everyday life. The peculiar spatial condition of the struggle over Palestine is the privileged site of academic observation and research. Our program is interdisciplinary in nature as we invoke Anthropology, Sociology, Architecture, Environmental Studies, Development Studies and Cultural Studies to explore complex social phenomena. The Urban Studies program will equip students with superior skills for the coordination of complex projects; graduates will also possess a strong sense of responsibility with regard to the justice and sustainable development of their own nation and community. The program aims to build solid bases in knowledge and methods in order to produce a new generation of professionals in the field of urban planning who are not simply implementers who can execute the ideas of others, but who are intellectual leaders who combine practical skills with creative solutions and visionary ideas.

Objectives:

The Urban Studies program aims to graduate leaders and intellectuals who are able to perform as contributing members of their communities and capable of offering creative solutions to social/political issues and solving environmental challenges. This program comes to AQB as an urgent need within the Palestinian urban and environmental sustainability strategies. By fulfilling this need, AQB graduates of this program will benefit from joining positions in the job market related to urban studies and spatial studies. In addition, the program will empower the graduates to work independently as both entrepreneurs and freelancers. 

The principal objectives of Al-Quds Bard College are to promote critical thinking and writing and to impart a spirit of independent inquiry, through active and student-centered learning, often in small, seminar-type courses. As part of achieving this, AQB inspires students to gain comprehension of intellectual history, and - most importantly - an understanding that they are not learning a body of knowledge so much as a practice of reading carefully and thinking deeply about significant questions, drawing on centuries and even millennia of works by great minds. 

Career Prospects:

Our program offers an interactive learning experience, premised upon a mix of class discussions, theoretical engagements, and fieldwork to foster critical thinking and writing. This fruitful engagement will pave the way for our students to compete for positions in:

• Developmental Agencies

• International and Local NGO’s

• Municipalities

• Academia

• the Private Sector

Moreover, we empower our students to capitalize upon our network of partners, guest speakers, and experts who regularly partake in our class discussions and field visits. This engagement shall generate meaningful interactions, not bounded by the contours of academia, hence enabling our students to explore a plethora of career and training opportunities of value.