Research

My research is focused on understanding the spatial dimensions of inequality and marginalization as well as the politics of aid and development. My work is mostly based on ethnographic and qualitative methodologies, with a geographic focus on the Mediterranean Region.

Monographs

2013. Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt. University of Minnesota Press.

Refereed Journal Articles

2021 Atia, M and Doherty, G. On Doing Relational Research: Participatory Mapping as an Emergent Research Process. Antipode.

2019 Atia, M. Refusing a “City without Slums”: Moroccan slum dwellers' nonmovements and the art of presence. Cities.

2017 Atia, M. and Herrold, C. “Governing Through Patronage: The Rise of NGOs and the Fall of Civil Society in Palestine and Morocco.” Voluntas.

2017 Rignall, K. and Atia, M. “The global rural: Relational geographies of poverty and uneven development”, Geography Compass.

2016 Herrold, C. and Atia, M. Competing Rather than Collaborating: Egyptian Nongovernmental Organizations in Turbulence. Nonprofit Policy Forum , 7(3): 389-407.

2015 A. Roess, L. Carruth, M. Mann, I. Kabbash, S. Melaku, M. Atia, M. Mohamed, S. Bansal, S. Lahm, Y. Terefe, M. Salman. “Livestock movement and emerging zoonotic disease outbreaks: applying ecological, network, and sociocultural theories to assess the risk of Middle East respiratory syndrome from camel trade in Ethiopia and Egypt,” The Lancet Global Health 3(S26).

2012 A Way to Paradise: Pious Neoliberalism, Islam, and Faith-based Development.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(4), 808-827.

2012 Cornwell, Graham and Mona Atia. “Imaginative Geographies of Amazigh Activism in Morocco” Social and Cultural Geography 13(3), 255-274.

2011 "Innocent victims": An accounting of Anti-terrorism in the Egyptian Legal Context. Journal of Islamic and Near Eastern Law, 9(1).

2007 “In Whose Interest? Financial Surveillance and the Circuits of Exception in the War on Terror.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. 25(3), 447-475.

2007 Wyly, Elvin K., Mona Atia, Elizabeth Lee, and Pablo Mendez. “Race, Gender, and Statistical Representation: Predatory Mortgage Lending and the U.S. Community Reinvestment Movement.” Environment and Planning A. 39(9), 2139-2166.

2006 Wyly, Elvin K., Mona Atia, Holly Foxcroft, Daniel J. Hammel, and Kelley Phillips-Watts. “American Home: Predatory Mortgage Capital and Spaces of Race and Class Exploitation in the United States.” Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, 88(1), 105-132.

2004 Wyly, Elvin K., Mona Atia, and Daniel J. Hammel. “Has Mortgage Capital Found an Inner-city Spatial Fix?” Housing Policy Debate, 15(3), 623-685.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

2019 Islamic Charities, Calculative Regimes and the Promotion of Entrepreneurial Subjects in Egypt. In James, Erica. Governing Gifts: Faith, Charity, and the Security State. School for Advanced Research, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

2008 “The Arab Republic of Egypt” in From Charity to Change: Trends in Arab Philanthropy, eds. Barbara Ibrahim and Dina Sherif, Gerhart Center for Philanthropy and Civic Engagement, American University in Cairo Press.

Other Publications

2021 Atia, M. and Samlali, S. 2021. Government Efforts to Reduce Inequality in Morocco are Only Making Matters Worse. Middle East Report. March.

2020 Kovacic, Z. and Atia, M. 2021. Spaces of informality and the governing of slums. Cities

2018 Marei, F.G., Atia, M. Bhungalia, L. and Dewachi, O. Interventions on governing the ungovernable, Political Geography. i 67, 176-186.

2017 Urban Transformations in the Middle East and North Africa from a Geographical Perspective. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 49(2), 327-330.

2014 Poverty Mapping: A Genealogy. Middle East Report. 272, Fall, 20-21.

2014 “Pious Neoliberalism” in Islamist Social Services. Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS Studies 9). Oct 15.

2014 “Unlocking Islamic Charity for Development and Innovation,” Consulting thought piece for Silatech Corporation.

2013 Nostalgia, Hope and Fear on the Path to June 30 Jadaliyya.

2011 Abdou, E., Atia, M., Hussein, N., Kharas, H., Maaty, A. “How Can the U.S. and International Finance Institutions Best Engage Egypt’s Civil Society?” Brookings Global Views Policy Paper, 23. Washington DC: Brookings Institute.

2005 “In Whose Interest? Financial Surveillance and the War on Terrorism Finance,” Antipode Graduate Student Scholarship Announcement, 37(1), 165-167.