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Mashael al-Hajri, winner of the Best Student Research award at QF’s Annual Research Forum |
Mashael al-Hajri focused her empirical study on the unique characteristics of the neighbourhoods in the Gulf, known as Fireeqs, and the socio-cultural aspects of urbanism they lead to.
Entitled ‘The Concept of Fireeq: Is it a contemporary, culturally sustainable urban design paradigm,” al-Hajri’s research was conducted as part of her summer internship at Msheireb Properties as a research assistant for the Gulf Encyclopedia for Sustainable Urbanism (GESU). It was submitted under the student research in humanities and social sciences category at the Annual Research Forum, which took place from November 20 to 22 at the Qatar National Convention Centre.
In al-Hajri’s research, the tribal migration patterns to and from Qatar and its effect on the concept of “fireeq” from a socio-cultural perspective were examined.
“The traditional culture of Qatar was largely based on the concept or the system of the fireeq. It provided the social and physical fabric that bound the Qatari culture together. The research objective was to question and elucidate whether the concept of fireeq can be a culturally sustainable urban design model in contemporary times in Qatar,” al-Hajri explained.
“The research will become my part of the contribution to the GESU encyclopaedia,” she added.
GESU is a holistic, multi-year, cross-disciplinary, cross-border study focusing on sustainable urbanism in the Gulf region and is sponsored by Msheireb Properties, a subsidiary of Qatar Foundation.
The research project is being led by Harvard University Graduate School of Design, which is basing the methodology on a rigorous understanding of the past, present and future development trajectories in the region as well as on the most current knowledge of sustainability.
“We are delighted that Mashael has received this important acknowledgement for an excellent project. Her work embodies values at the core of Georgetown’s mission in Qatar: to train students to use sound methods of inquiry so that they may produce reliable and useful knowledge for Qatar’s society,” said John T Crist, Director of Research at SFSQ.
“The training for research offered through SFSQ not only builds human capital in Qatar, but also promotes Qatar’s rapidly increasing profile within the international research community and fosters productive partnerships with Qatari industries and other top international corporations in Doha,” Crist added.
