Justin McGuinness

Justin McGuinness is an Associate Professor and Interim Program Director of the MA in Global Communications at The American University of Paris, within the Department of Communication, Media and Culture, where he has been affiliated since 2001 after joining from prior work in North Africa.

His academic background includes:

• PhD in representations of power, poverty and the city from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne (Department of Architecture, Landscape and Planning)
• MA from the University of Durham
• BA in Oriental Studies (Arabic and Islamic studies) from the University of Cambridge

As a cultural geographer, McGuinness specializes in architectural history, place construction, and policy implementation within neoliberal urbanism and globalization frameworks. His fieldwork examines discursive processes in Maghrebi cities, particularly Fès and Tunis, focusing on land use changes, river-front transformations, and conservation planning in historic medinas under evolving political contexts. His interdisciplinary approach bridges geography, architecture, and cultural studies to analyze how urban spaces reflect power dynamics and socio-political transitions.

His 13 publications (1994-2016) reveal consistent focus on North African urban studies, with recurring themes of medina conservation, spiritual tourism (especially Fes Festival of World Sacred Music), and digital discourse analysis in Morocco. The works demonstrate methodological diversity combining discourse analysis, ethnographic observation, and critical urban theory, particularly examining how political shifts from authoritarianism to democracy impact urban planning practices and heritage management.

McGuinness actively disseminates research through international conferences including the Royal Geographical Society (2013), where he presented on Tunisian gentrification, and events in Tours, Amman, and Barcelona addressing urban development, religious tourism, and spatial justice. No information on student supervision or grant funding is available in the source material.