Dalal Musaed Alsayer

DALAL MUSAED ALSAYER, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Architecture in the College of Architecture at Kuwait University. Her research lies at the intersection of architecture, environment, and development in the context of the Arab World during the twentieth century.

She is the co-author, with Ricardo Camacho & Sara Saragoça Soares, of “Pan-Arab Modernism: History of Architectural Practice in The Middle East” (Actar, 2021) and is currently developing her manuscript based on her dissertation, “Architecture, Environment, Development: The United States and the Making of Modern Arabia, 1949-1961,” which examines the ways the that United States’s development programs sought to transform the social, environmental, and urban fabric of the Arab World.

Dalal is a co-founding editor of Current: Collective for Architecture History and Environment, a web platform that focuses on the intersection of architecture history and environment. Dalal is also the co-chair, with Megan Eardley, of the Architecture and Environment interest group at the European Architectural History Network (EAHN), and the co-chair, with Daniel A. Barber and Joy Knoblauch, of the Society of Architectural Historians (SAH)’s affiliate group, Climate Change and Architectural History.

Dalal is the recipient of several awards and grants including the Kuwait University Master and Ph.D. Scholarship from Kuwait University; the Penny White Fund Grant from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; the Philippines Grant and NRC Funds Grant, from Harvard University; the Will M. Mehlhorn Scholarship from the University of Pennsylvania; the Mellon Foundation Humanities + Urbanism + Design Student Research Award from the Mellon Foundation initiative at the University of Pennsylvania; and travel and research grants from the Harry S. Truman Library Institute, Rockefeller Archive Center, Middle East Studies Association, and the Eisenhower Foundation. She was also recently a finalist in the World History Association (WHA) Dissertation Award.

Dalal holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Kuwait University; a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design from the GSAPP, Columbia University; a Master of Design Studies in Urbanism, Landscape, Ecology, from GSD, Harvard University; and a Master of Science and a Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania.