Sofia Shwayri

Visiting Assistant Professor - Urban Studies 

Sofia T. Shwayri is a visiting assistant professor in Urban Studies at the School of Liberal Arts and Architecture at Tulane University.  She is an urban historian with research interests in three main areas: 1) Studying conflict and cities, and post-conflict reconstruction in the making of the contemporary Middle Eastern city; 2) Understanding the development of the smart-ecocity; and 3) Smart governance.

Professor Shwayri is an advisor at the Ecocity World organization, and one of its founders.  Before Tulane, she was a Visiting Scholar at the University of California at Berkeley where her academic journey began and where she earned her M.S. and Ph.D. in Architecture with an emphasis on Environmental Design in Developing Countries. She was also an Instructor in Peace and Conflict Studies, and a lecturer in the Department of City and Regional Planning.  After Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow in the area of the City at the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master's Program, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University.  After NYU, she was a Visiting Fellow in Lebanese Studies at Oxford University in St. Antony’s College, where she researched the Multiple Phases and Processes of Reconstruction in Lebanon. Professor Shwayri’s interests in cities took her to South Korea where she became an Associate Professor of International Planning and Development at the Graduate School of Environmental Studies at Seoul National University.

Her research is focused on understanding Korea’s smart and sustainable practices in cities as diverse as the capital Seoul, the administrative city of Sejong, and the ecocity of Songdo, with particular emphasis on smart governance.  She is currently finishing a paper on Smart Governance in Seoul under the late Mayor Park Won-soon, and writing a book about navigating, on foot, the COVID pandemic in Berkeley, California. Her most recent publication was for the International Telecommunication Union on  “Smart public health emergency management and ICT implementations”, with Professor Leonidas Anthopoulos.