Dina Yunis, Ph.D. is an interdisciplinary urban and SWANA scholar dedicated to uncovering the hidden socio-political lives of cities. Her work operates at the intersection of public space, visual culture, and subcultural resistance, with a specific focus on how publics and marginalised communities in the SWANA region navigate and negotiate power through nontraditional forms of protest.

Dina recently earned her PhD in Middle Eastern Studies from King’s College London. Her doctoral thesis, Spray, Space, & Society: Unveiling the Layers of Graffiti in Post-War Beirut, is a longitudinal study of Lebanon’s shifting socio-political landscape and the ways in which graffiti challenges entrenched power structures and reshapes sectarian narratives. By tracing the politicalisation and radicalisation of graffiti through successive upheavals and crises, her work establishes a framework for how publics reclaim spatial and political agency through cultural production in conflict-affected societies.

A specialist in qualitative and participatory research, Dina utilises thematic and visual analysis to bridge the gap between academic theory and community-led change. Her research methodology is grounded in a blend of high-impact research, evidence-based analysis, and community engagement, shaped by key roles at world-class institutions:

• At MIT, she contributed to a comprehensive urban development research study, analysing the complex nexus of low-income housing and public health in Boston’s Chinatown.

• At the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, as the Arab Youth Program Coordinator, she managed regional projects centred on youth-related issues such as youth dignity, wellbeing, and rights, effectively bridging the gap between grassroots activism and policy frameworks.

Dina’s current work advances the concept of the ‘political palimpsest’, in which she conceptualises the urban wall not merely as a surface but as a defiant and uncollectible modern archive. In this view, even the act of governmental erasures serves as a form of documentation, marking the state’s active participation in the visual struggle for the city.

Driven by a mission to critically map the everyday subcultural and creative practices that define urban life, Dina’s work remains dedicated to amplifying the voices of those navigating SWANA and the Global South’s complex socio-political and post-conflict landscapes. By documenting these ephemeral traces of defiance, she provides a critical lens through which to view post-conflict societies, ensuring that the voices of those who ‘write’ the city are not lost to time or censorship.