Merham Mohamed Hosny Anwar Keleg

Assistant Professor at Urban Planning

Career Information

Academic Information

Brief

Merham Keleg is an Assistant Professor at the Urban Design and Planning Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University. She was a PhD fellow at Oxford Brookes University, where her research focused on placemaking and green infrastructure in Cairo. Her work is driven by a commitment to advancing landscape research from understudied contexts, particularly in Egypt, the Arab region, and Africa.
Since 2021, Merham has served as a Trustee of the Landscape Research Group (LRG), where she currently coordinates the annual Research Funds. She is also an Associate Editor of the Landscape Research Journal and part of the editorial team for the third edition of the Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies. She has previously contributed as an Assistant Editor for the Journal of Public Space and as a member of the Public Space Advisory Board (Early Career) at City Space Architecture.
Her research interests include placemaking, people–nature relationships, climate adaptation, landscape governance, and public space livability. She is currently a research fellow with ARIN and UCL through the 2025 Accountable Adaptation Fellowship, developing a contextualised understanding of knowledge co-production on climate change in Cairo. Alongside research, Merham is Academic Coordinator of the Integrated Urbanism and Sustainable Design Master’s Program, committed to linking education and research in shaping the next generation of scholars. Merham was a research fellow at Technische Universität Berlin for two months in 2023 aiming at developing the curriculum for MSc course. Merham is currently engaged in two research that focus on linking education and research and promotes research from Africa.

Awards

April 2017: Joint Supervision Scholarship - Newton Mosharafa.

Publications

1. , " Public Perception of Environmental Change in Rapidly Growing Cities: the Case of Cairo, Egypt ", Real Corp 2020, 2020
2. Keleg, M., Butina Watson, G., Salheen, M.A., " The path to resilience: Change, landscape aesthetics, and socio-cultural identity in rapidly urbanising contexts. The case of Cairo, Egypt ", Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, 2021
3. Merham M. Keleg, " Prospects of Placemaking Progression in Arab cities ", The Journal of Public Space, 2020
4. , " Understanding people’s needs for a vivid public realm as a key towards enhancing modern neighbourhoods’ liveability. Nasr City in Cairo as a case study ", The Journal of Public Space, 2019
5. Keleg, Merham M., Watson, Georgia Butina, Salheen, Mohamed A., " A critical review for Cairo's green open spaces dynamics as a prospect to act as placemaking anchors ", Urban Design International, 2022
6. Merham Keleg, Marwa Abdel Lati, Mohamed Salheen, " Towards an Integrated Model of Livability of Public Spaces in Middle Income Neighborhoods ", SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017
7. Merham Keleg, " Borderscapes as an approach for understanding green belts in an ever-growing metropolitan. The case of Cairo, Egypt ", Landscape Research, 2025
8. Salma Mohamed Mahmoud Elshafie, Anne-Sophie Spinaci, Merham M. Keleg, " Play for All ", The Journal of Public Space, 2024

Research Projects

2023-2026: DAAD Programm Praxispartnerschaften (2023-2026) Towards Green(er) Egyptian Cities: Through People-centered Practice-oriented Urban Education
2023-2026: SDGs GoGlocal! Translocal and transdisciplinary teaching and research to ground the SDGs through integrated urban development