Rim Yassine Kassab

Dr. Rim Yassine Kassab is a Moroccan Syrian architect and urban scholar and lecturer specialising in urban mega-projects, heritage, and governance in Morocco and the Global South. She holds a master's in architecture and urban studies from the National School of Architecture of Rabat, a master's in history and heritage from Le Mans University in France and a PhD in architecture from Liverpool University. She is currently affiliated with NIMAR (Netherlands Institute in Morocco), where she is involved in teaching, coordination and academic programme development.

Her research is driven by the conviction that cities in the Global South are not passive recipients of globalisation, but rather active producers of new urban futures that deserve their own narratives, tools and leadership. More specifically, her interests include urban heritage (especially medinas, north African urban heritage), large-scale urban projects (especially the top-down projects in Morocco), policy-driven transformations, and community-based approaches to urban change. 

During her fellowship in the Netherlands, at the African Studies Centre Leiden, her main goal is strengthening long-term academic collaboration between Moroccan and Dutch institutions. Indeed, she is the process coordinator of the new LDE minor “Urban Studies in Morocco: cities in transformation”. Her fellowship focuses on the academic development of the minor and supports its consolidation as a long-term platform for education, research, and South–North academic exchange. The aim is to support the integration of challenge-based and field-oriented pedagogies, and to develop sustainable teaching and research models that connect urban scholarship, policy engagement, and community-based knowledge production.