Sarah Eldefrawi is a Researcher in Urban Sociology at the Housing and Building Research Centre in Cairo, having completed her doctoral dissertation at the University of Paris 8 in 2025. Her thesis introduced a new theoretical lens for understanding “popular” as a mode of urbanization, confronting with the expert-driven urbanization applied to official urban planning. More broadly, her work centres on the socio-economic order and spatial politics of popular districts, examining how popular groups navigate public space and resources across cities in both the Global North and the Global South.

With a background in both sociology and urbanism, Dr. Eldefrawi’s research focuses on the popular economies and social infrastructures that sustain life in this mode of urbanization. She is also interested in how state policies—often framed as modernization or sanitation efforts—interact with local practices of solidarity, care, and resistance. Her current postdoctoral research investigates waste and power relation in popular areas. She focuses on the tension between official narratives of “cleanliness” rooted in colonial legacies and the lived realities of waste handling by popular communities in Cairo and the Lille Metropolitan Area.