About this Event
Cities Imaginaries Lecture 2026
Cities Imaginaries is an annual public lecture series led by UCL Urban Laboratory in association with the UCL Department of English Language and Literature, where invited speakers reflect on how their creative work engages with cities, urban life and cultural representation.
This year, Urban Lab is delighted to welcome Hisham Matar to deliver the lecture. Almost every book Hisham Matar has written is, in one way or another, preoccupied with a city. In this event, he will use readings from his books as stepping stones between these cities, in the hope of saying something about their imaginative lives.
Born in New York to Libyan parents, Matar spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived much of his adult life in London. He is the author of the novels In the Country of Men, Anatomy of a Disappearance and My Friends, which won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and the memoirs A Month in Siena and The Return, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Doors open at 18:30 for a 19:00 start.
The evening will include a lecture, followed by a conversation and a Q&A with the audience, chaired by Dr Lara Choksey.
Biography
Hisham Matar is Professor of Professional Practice in English, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, and Comparative Literature Barnard College, Columbia University. Born in New York to Libyan parents, Matar spent his childhood in Tripoli and Cairo and has lived much of his adult life in London. He is the author of the novels In the Country of Men, Anatomy of a Disappearance, and My Friends, which won the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and the memoirs A Month in Siena and The Return, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
This event is from the UCL Urban Laboratory.
Event venue & nearby stays
Sir Ambrose Fleming Lecture Theatre, Roberts Building, G06, London, United Kingdom
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