UZMA Z. RIZVI, PHD
Associate Professor of Anthropology & Urban Studies, Pratt Institute

This is a co-sponsored event with the Department of Anthropology.  The event will be held in person at the Stanford Archaeology Center as well as via Zoom.  To connect to this event via Zoom, please register using the button above.

Abstract
Tracing almost a decade of work and archaeological inquiry in the UAE, this presentation draws our attention to how we can do archaeology in the service of equity and transformational justice. A key component of this approach foregrounds decolonial methodologies, while at the same time recognizing the distinctions between practicing such methods in a democracy as compared to an elective monarchy 
or ethnocracy. Mainstays of decolonial methods such as critical pedagogy and public engagement are necessarily redefined as they exist differently in highly regulated contexts. Archaeological and heritage practice find themselves most effectively expressed within the spaces of contemporary art, design, and architecture. Often these iterations push the boundaries of what we have been taught archaeology must be, leading the presentation to conclude with visioning our discipline differently.