Guy Priver

Research interests: localism in international law, development and peacebuilding; urban studies and divided cities; cultural heritage; legal sociology; qualitative methods. 

Research summary: My research offers a critical inquiry into the institutional practices developed by international organizations to engage local communities in conflicted cities, investigating the prospects for local participation and inclusion under competing framings of urban struggle. At the center are divided Nicosia and Jerusalem, where international interventions, whether aimed at development, peacebuilding, or heritage protection, often generate contradictory outcomes. It shows how initiatives designed to foster bi-communal ties, such as the EU-led revitalization of Nicosia, have coincided with gentrification and the suppression of grassroots mobilizations, raising the question of how expert frameworks inadvertently produce exclusionary effects. Similarly, it interrogates the unification of infrastructure, often framed as a technical necessity, a discursive strategy that enables implementation while privileging certain forms of expertise and sidelining political and ethical concerns. Drawing on critical legal theory, urban sociology, development and peacebuilding studies, and combining textual analysis of legal decisions and reports with interviews and ethnographic research, my work examines how expert practices of envisioning urban futures both promise and constrain inclusive forms of city-making.

This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 12.28.2025)