Amal is a PhD candidate in the urban planning group of the GPIO. She has a BSc. in Sociology and cultural Anthropology from Creighton University (Nebraska, USA) and a MSc. in Urban and Regional Planning from UvA. As an urban planner specializing in housing systems, she has spent the last decade in the social housing sector working at the intersection of policy, research, program design and evolution.

Her housing stability and eviction prevention work in the Midwest led her to launch unevictIA, an eviction and housing displacement research initaitve in 2021. Her current research interests are at the intersection of neighborhood change, spatial inequality, and the application of historic GIS technology in the reconstruction of lost landscapes.

Expertise and research fields

• Critical Cartography 
• Critical urban theory
• Urban geography and sociology
• Public policy and the public good
• Local knowledge and communities of practice

Other links

• UGoveRN Network
• UvA Urban Planning Group Profile

Research methods

• Historic GIS
• Spatial Analysis
• Social network analysis
• Storytelling ethnography
• Experimental research design

Current research project

Understanding the role of power, race and socio-economic status in how geographic unevenness and displacement is legitimised, constructed, and embedded within the built environment.

Research grants & honours

• Polk County Housing Trust Fund | Graduate Housing Justice Fellow (2022–2023) 
• Iowa State University | Visiting Scholar (2022–2023)

Current cooperations

• Polk County Housing Trust Fund
• UnevictIA