Special Issue Launch Event with Keynote by Ammar Azzouz

Join us to celebrate the publication of the special issue Spectres of Time in Space: Tracing Phantom Temporalities with Architectural Methodologies in the journal 'Architecture and Culture'. The special issue features twelve multidisciplinary contributions that use architecturally-attuned methods to take seriously the spectral forces that shape our everyday lives and built environments. The special issue was edited by Dr Ibrahim Abdou, Dr Ekaterina Mizrokhi, and Professor Maximilian Sternberg.
The special issue is brought into conversation with a keynote lecture by Dr Ammar Azzouz, whose work on war, displacement and architecture in Syria speaks directly to the issue's core concerns.

KEYNOTE :

Absence that Remains: On Forced Disappearance, Death and Ruins

There are more than 100,000 people still missing in Syria. Their fate remains unknown. For many years at the time of the Assad dictatorship, public grief was prohibited, pain was silenced, and mourning was muted. Those who remembered the disappeared, might too, disappear. But today, with the collapse of the Assad regime, families of the disappeared, and grassroot organisations, are pushing new frontiers to centre the stories of the disappeared. In this event, we visit some of the artistic and architectural efforts that have been uniting people in grief, in order to build a future that brings the past with it in search for justice.

Ammar Azzouz is a Lecturer in Human Geography, and British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He founded the course Violence and Cities: From Destruction to Reconstruction, which he teaches at the Refugee Studies Centre, Oxford. His research focuses on war and cities, cultural heritage and art in exile. He is the author of Domicide: Architecture, War and the Destruction of Home in Syria (Bloomsbury, 2023). He has written for a wide range of platforms including the New York Times, Financial Times and the Guardian.

This event is free and open to all but registration is essential as spaces are limited.

The launch and lecture will be followed by a catered reception.

Friday 22 May 2026, 18:00-20:30
Pavilion Room, Newnham College
University of Cambridge
CB3 9DF

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