Miami University, Associate Professor Diane Fellows and students of arc107 “Global Design”  skyping with Sahar Qawasmi, Architect, RIWAQ, Occupied Palestinian Territory. 

Associate Professor Diane Fellows (Miami University) and Sahar Qawasmi (Architect, RIWAQ, Occupied Palestinian Territory) are co-authors of “Contesting Boundaries:  Academia, Design and Experiencing Global Crises in Real Time regarding the consequence of contemporary Diaspora to people and place within the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The paper is to be presented at the “6th International Conference on Design Principles & Practices, UCLA, January 2012″ and the “Conference in Communication and Media Studies: (Re)Making and Undoing of Peace/Conflict”,  Famagusta, North Cyprus, April, 2012. Sahar Qawasmi is a graduate of the M.Arch program of Miami University, and, currently, lives and works in her home-city of Ramallah. Fellows teaches “arc107 Global Design”, part of the Miami University’s Foundation Plan to engage students across the university disciplines with global concerns and contexts. Fellows and Qawasmi frame the discussion through personal experience and an inter-generational perspective of modern and contemporary Diaspora, as arc107 Global Design students negotiate the discourse while listening to and seeing life in Ramallah unfold in real-time.