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Dr Sara Fregonese

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Sara Fregonese is currently a British Academy post-doctoral fellow (2009-2012) interested in urban geopolitics. Her PhD in Geography from Newcastle University in 2008 was entitled “City, war and geopolitics: political violence and Beirut’s built environment in the Lebanese civil war”.  Born and raised in Italy, she graduated with a BA (Middle Eastern Studies, 2003) and an MA (Mediterranean Studies, 2004) from the University of Venice.
Sara’s empirical research focuses on Lebanon, and adopts ethnographic methods to expose the everyday processes of urban contestation. Her interest develops around three thematic strands: urbicide and the role of the urban built environment in conflict; state and non-state geopolitical knowledges; and the violent geographies of sectarianism and Lebanon’s colonial past.

Her research at Royal Holloway extends to the urban geopolitics of contemporary Beirut looking in particular at:

- The role of the built environment in shaping everyday materiality and representations of urban conflict;
- The landscapes produced by the encounters between the regular army and militias in urban conflict as well as in its pacification.

In 2008 and 2009, Sara has also participated in the project “The Urban Environment: Mirror and Mediator of Radicalisation” (http://tinyurl.com/2avl76), within the ESRC/AHRC+FCO-funded programme “New security Challenges: a critical reassessment”. The project investigates mutual links between urban materiality and social polarisation. Sara conducted fieldwork in Amsterdam, Beirut, and Belfast, Berlin and co-authored an FCO report about the utility of including urban and material aspects into the analysis of social polarisation (http://tinyurl.com/9ja8b7).

Sara has published in English and Italian, but also conducts research in French, Arabic and Spanish.