Dr Fadi Shayya
School of Science, Engineering & Environment
Current positions
Lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism
Biography
Dr. Fadi Shayya (Arabic: فادي شيا) is a transdisciplinary scholar, educator, and design strategist who uses architectural and urban research to investigate how societies negotiate technological, environmental, and political change. His written, visual, and collaborative research centre on the operational lives of infrastructures, landscapes, and technologies, asking how they shape inhabitation, vulnerability, and the struggle for justice in a world of conflict and inequalities. Throughout this work, he examines the making and unmaking of cities and the social life of buildings and infrastructure under pressure.
At the University of Salford, he is Interim Director of the Built and Human Environments Research Centre, Lecturer in Architecture & Urbanism, and REF 2029 Co-Lead. He peer-reviews for UKRI and contributes to research strategy, impact, and civic partnerships within and beyond the University.
His recent recognition includes invited contributions to the UIA World Congress of Architects (2023), World Habitat Day (2024), and the British Council & THINKlab UK–BiH Fellowship Programme (2025). A Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, he also serves on international advisory and editorial boards and is an Affiliate of Lancaster University’s Centre for Science Studies (CSS).
Before joining academia, he spent a decade working across architecture, planning, and international development in consultancy, public policy, and multilateral organisations, including Dar Al-Handasah, UN-ESCWA, and various UN agencies. This work spanned interconnected urban contexts across the Middle East, the UK, and North America.
Areas of Research
Fadi’s research investigates the politics of survivability: how people, technologies, and environments adapt under conditions of militarisation, infrastructural pressure, and spatial uncertainty. Developed through doctoral training at the University of Manchester, his work draws on architectural STS, pragmatist philosophy, and Actor-Network Theory to examine how built, proposed, and ruined environments shape social relations. It contributes to wider debates on militarised urbanism, conflict, and the built environment, as well as the relations between infrastructure, power, and everyday life.
His current projects include a forthcoming monograph (𝘈𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘈𝘳𝘮𝘰𝘶𝘳: 𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘵𝘺, 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘚𝘱𝘢𝘤𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘚𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘐𝘯𝘩𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯), new collaborative research on operational landscapes, urban emergencies, and the technologies of inhabitation, developed with academic and community partners. These projects examine cities and infrastructural landscapes under pressure, including urbicide and post-war reconstruction in Gaza, conflict and displacement in Lebanon, and the implications of AI, digital technologies, and robotic systems for urban life. His forthcoming text, “Haunting as Method” (under review), weaves ethnographic observation, creative writing, and spatial analysis to examine how memory and loss inhabit the landscape.
His practice-research and consultancy work extends this agenda into civic and cultural contexts. Through Discursive Formations, Visualizing Palestine, the Lokman Slim Foundation, and collaborations with public and community partners, he develops publications, exhibitions, visual research, and strategic tools that translate architectural and urban inquiry into public knowledge, supporting debates on urban citizenship, political violence, memory, and justice. This work engages with questions of design and society, contested public space, architectural and urban imaginaries, and the relationships between heritage and spatial justice.
Across this work, he advances a translational approach to architectural inquiry, connecting research, public engagement, and spatial practice through collaborative, editorial, and visual forms of knowledge production. His work brings architectural inquiry into dialogue with the social sciences, cultural practice, and community partners to address complex societal challenges, from urban regeneration and technological change to conflict, displacement, and recovery.
𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵, 𝘄𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘀: https://fadishayya.com/research
Areas of Supervision
I welcome PhD proposals that use architectural and urban inquiry to address questions of technology, conflict, environmental change, and collective life, including research on operational landscapes, infrastructures, and practices of inhabitation across academic, professional, and community contexts. Proposals may also examine cities under pressure, the politics of urban technology, and landscapes of conflict, displacement, and recovery.
Current PhD Supervisees:
•Hajar Al-Janabi (with Dr Tanja Poppelreuter) – Insulating Imaginaries: Hybrid Work and the Limits of Spatial Transformation (working title)
•Kevin Baker (with Prof Terrence Fernando) – Smart Cities as a Vehicle of Capital: Urbanisation through Digital Application (working title)
𝗔𝗿𝗰𝗵𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲, 𝗨𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺 & 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 – Architectural Humanities; Urban Studies; Collective and Public Space; Landscape and Territorial Urbanism; Architectural and Urban Imaginaries; Urban Regeneration.
𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗳𝗹𝗶𝗰𝘁, 𝗜𝗻𝗵𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 & 𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 – Critical Military and Security Studies; War/Post-war Geographies; Erasure, Ruin, and the Politics of Reconstruction; Infrastructural Exhaustion; Operational Landscapes; Inhabitation as a Political Practice; Militarised Urbanism; Urban Emergencies.
𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗱𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗜𝗻𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗿𝘆 – Design Ethnography; Visual, Digital, and Textual Methods; Haunting and Conflict; Counter-Cartography; Recursive and Non-linear Urban Processes.
𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗼𝗿𝘆, 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗶𝘁𝘆 & 𝗝𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗲 – Science and Technology Studies (STS); Technicity, Mediation, and Relational Materialism; Temporality (suspension, emergency time, slow violence); Spatial and Environmental Justice; Right to Landscape; The Urban Politics of Technology.
Fadi teaches at postgraduate and undergraduate levels and supervises doctoral students. He advances a research-led pedagogy that treats the design studio as a civic rehearsal. Combining ethnographic, visual, textual, and speculative methods, he enables students to approach design as spatial inquiry engaged with questions of social and environmental justice. His teaching contributes to debates about the future of architectural and design education, including how studios respond to technological change, contested urban conditions, and diverse forms of knowledge.
He currently leads Year 2 of the Master of Architecture programme and advises MArch Theses. His approach has been recognised through the School of Science, Engineering and Environment Award for Innovative Teaching Methods (2025), external examiner commendations, and national student successes, including student work nominated for the RIBA Silver Medal and Women in Property Awards.
A Fellow of Advance HE (FHEA), he has previously taught at the University of Manchester, Manchester School of Architecture, Parsons School of Design in New York, and the American University of Beirut, championing inclusive and critically reflexive studio environments.
𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀: https://fadishayya.com/teaching
Qualifications
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Fellow (FHEA) Advance HE
2020 -
PhD Architecture
2016 - 2021 -
MA Theories of Urban Practice
2014 - 2016 -
Master of Urban Design
2004 - 2006 -
Bachelor of Architectural Engineering
1997 - 2002
Recognitions
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Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
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Member, UKRI Talent Peer Review College
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Advisory Board Member
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Affiliate, Centre for Science Studies (CSS)
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Member of Scientific Committee