Dr Fatma Mhmood (b. 1991, Dubai) is an Emirati architect, urban designer, researcher, and educator. She has built an interdisciplinary career across the UAE, the United States, and the United Kingdom, integrating professional practice with academic research. Her approach is grounded in an ethic of care and an understanding of the reciprocal relationship between people and the land. Fatma’s work seeks to integrate cultural histories and people’s lived experiences to inform human-centred and climatically responsive design approaches.

 

Fatma completed her PhD in architecture at the University of Cambridge in 2026. Her doctoral research explored cultural perceptions of nature in the UAE and women’s experiences of outdoor recreational landscapes. While pursuing her doctoral studies, Fatma lectured and supervised courses within the History and Theory sequence at the University of Cambridge and served as an undergraduate dissertation supervisor. She also served as a visiting lecturer at London South Bank University, where she taught undergraduate architecture studio and the foundation module: Communicating Ideas. Fatma published articles in peer-reviewed journals and acted as a co-editor-in-chief of Scroope 32; the Cambridge Architectural Journal.

 

Prior to her doctoral studies, Fatma completed a Master in Design Studies (MDes '21) with a concentration in Urbanism, Landscape and Ecology at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Her master's thesis developed a critical understanding of fullness in the Empty Quarter, challenging binary conceptions of desert and green. During her time at Harvard GSD, she also worked as a research assistant at the Critical Landscapes Lab and the Office for Urbanization, contributing to urban research, GIS mapping, and spatial analysis for a design research project addressing the housing shortage in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a mobility-oriented design project in Miami.

 

Fatma’s professional experience spans architectural design and development. She worked as an architectural associate at LATENT Productions in New York City, where she contributed to the projects: Greylock WORKS (adaptive-reuse) and SEED (housing). Earlier, she worked as an architect at Emaar Properties in Dubai, representing the client and overseeing the design of hospitality projects. Her professional foundational training began at Dominique Perrault Architecture in Paris and WS Atkins in Dubai. Fatma also holds a Master of Science in Architecture and Urban Design (MSAUD ‘18) from Columbia University, and a Bachelor of Architecture (BArch ‘13) from the American University of Sharjah.