Yasser Elsheshtawy is a professor of architecture and independent scholar specializing in urbanization, informal urbanism, and the history of Middle Eastern cities. He is a non-resident scholar at the Gulf States Institute in Washington, DC, and an adjunct professor at Columbia GSAPP. Formerly at UAE University (1997-2017), he curated the UAE Pavilion at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale and has authored or edited eight books, including Dubai: Behind an Urban Spectacle (2010) and Arab Modernism(s): Cities, History and Culture (2026).