Colin McLaughlin-Alcock

Education & Professional History

Long Island University, BA; University of California, Irvine, MA, PhD

Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology. University of California, Irvine. 2019.

M.A. Cultural Anthropology. University of California, Irvine. 2016.

B.A. Interdisciplinary World Studies. Long Island University. 2002.

In my ethnographic research, I work with artists in Amman, Jordan. I study art as an activity through which artists build relationships, and I ask how emergent artistic community contributes to wider social and political change.

My current project focuses on an emerging artistic neighborhood in Amman. Over the past few years, this neighborhood, Jabal al Luweibde, has become a popular artistic hub, known for an unusually liberal, tolerant, and cosmopolitan artistic sociality. Examining how this neighborhood (and contestation over it) provides a model for reimagining and intervening in the wider city, my analysis links consideration of aesthetic and spatial politics to show how art can effect political change by transforming peoples’ imaginaries of urban space.

In general, my research speaks to issues of collectivity, art and urban change, gentrification, creative cities, and identity in the contemporary Middle East.