Yasmina El Chami is an architect and assistant professor in architectural humanities at the University of Sheffield. She holds a BArch from the American University of Beirut, an MPhil from the Architectural Association, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her work explores the architecture of informal imperial actors in the nineteenth and twentieth-century Eastern Mediterranean. El Chami’s research has been supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art; the Graham Foundation; the Institute of Historical Research, London; and the Cambridge Trust, among others. Her first monograph, Collective Colonialism: Architecture and Missionary Competition in Ottoman Lebanon, is due to be published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2027.
During her fellowship at KWI, Yasmina will be developing her new book project, “Building an American ‘Near East’,” which examines the role of American education in the shaping of scientific cultures in the post-Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean. The book focuses on the campus-building activities of the Near East College Association (NECA, est. 1919) and traces the development of an American geopolitical project operating through six interlinked colleges in post-WWI Lebanon, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece. It offers new insights into the overlooked influence of the United States in the post-WWI Mediterranean and highlights the crucial and multifaceted role of architecture in consolidating complex political, economic, and cultural interests at an urban and regional scale.