Modern Heritage Research Grants

This project investigates the largely undocumented role of Emirati women in shaping urban modernity between 1960 and 1990, a period of rapid urban transformation in the UAE. Focusing on everyday spaces such as souqs, clinics, schools, and municipal buildings, it examines how women navigated, influenced, and co-produced the built environment, shaping cultural norms and community life. Old Umm Al Quwain serves as the central case study, offering a preserved urban core rich in spatial and social memory. Using oral histories, archival research, spatial analysis, thematic mapping, and audio-visual documentation, the project reconstructs “invisible” heritage layers of gendered experience. Its innovative approach reframes women as active agents of urban change, merging memory and spatial analysis to produce interactive memory maps, a short documentary, and exhibitions. Ultimately, it contributes a gender-inclusive perspective to UAE heritage studies, linking personal memory to architectural history and informing future heritage preservation policy.