Pedagogy 

Position 

Architectural education is not simply the imparting of knowledge and skills necessary for practice; it involves the development of values, critical dispositions, and philosophical positions. An architectural educator must engage with fundamental questions about the nature of reality and the ways in which knowledge about that reality is constructed and conveyed. In this respect, students need to be exposed to diverse epistemological positions, moving beyond a single dominant paradigm to understand the built environment as shaped by multiple, often contested, realities.

My position as an educator is predicated on the conviction that architecture and urban design carry profound social and ethical responsibilities. Teaching should cultivate students' capacity to think critically, question assumptions, and engage with the values, preferences, and lifestyles of the people who will ultimately inhabit the environments they design. This means reconciling technical and programmatic dimensions of architecture with broader conceptual, cultural, and human concerns, and doing so in ways that are responsive to the demands of an increasingly complex and interconnected world.

In recent years, this position has expanded to encompass questions of decolonisation, sustainability, and global equity in architectural knowledge and practice. Recognising that dominant pedagogical traditions have often marginalised non-Western ways of knowing, my teaching and research increasingly engage with diverse global perspectives, drawing on the Global South as a site of rich pedagogical encounter and critical reflection.

Approach to Classroom and Studio Teaching

My effort as an architectural educator has been to reconcile the technical and programmatic aspects of architecture with the conceptual and critical. The central challenge is to balance professional skills and abilities with intellectual growth — ensuring that students develop not only as competent practitioners but as thoughtful, socially aware designers. In teaching design studios and seminar courses at any level, I seek to introduce concepts that reflect the social and ethical responsibilities of the profession, with particular attention to architectural and urban programming, environmental evaluation, and post-occupancy assessment. I place high value on understanding user populations and their cultural aspirations, and I consistently work to integrate real-life experience into studio and classroom settings.

My studio approach is organised around three interconnected questions: what, how, and why. The what of design concerns the identification of human activities appropriate to particular building types and contexts. The how addresses the manipulation of spatial configurations and forms in response to environmental, cultural, and human concerns. The why asks students to reflect on why a particular type of space or form is appropriate for a given pattern of human behaviour. Together, these questions form a framework for design thinking that is rigorous, contextually grounded, and people-centred.

Underlying this approach is a commitment to giving students confidence in their critical abilities, the capacity to formulate a well-reasoned position and articulate it clearly. The aim is to strike a productive balance between design as a creative act and design as a practice shaped by responsibility to the people and places affected by built interventions. Studio assignments are therefore structured around a knowledge base that equips future designers with greater agency over their design decisions, drawing on inquiry-based, active, and experiential learning as complementary modes of engagement.

Teaching & Research Supervision Expertise

Ashraf Salama's teaching spans postgraduate and undergraduate levels, engaging students in the critical, cultural, and socio-behavioural dimensions of architectural and urban design. His approach is rooted in a longstanding commitment to inquiry-based, transformative, and research-led pedagogy — values that have shaped his teaching practice across four decades and multiple institutional contexts, including his eight-year tenure at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow where he led postgraduate research teaching and supervised a significant cohort of doctoral researchers. Alongside his teaching, he brings a sustained record of research mentorship: as primary supervisor, 22 PhD theses and more than 60 Master's theses have been completed and awarded, with a further 9 PhDs completed as second supervisor. He currently supervises 2 PhD students at Northumbria as primary supervisor.

Research Supervision

• PhD Supervision

• Master Thesis Supervision

Supervision topics span critical, transformative, and decolonised pedagogies; quality of urban life; spatial justice; urban continuity and fragmentation; social-cultural sustainability; emerging cities in the Gulf; post-war urban development; and urban space assessment.

Current Teaching

• PG: Criticism, Assessment and Research Methods in Architecture and Urbanism (CARMAU)

• PG: Cultural and Behavioural Factors in Architecture and Urbanism (CUBFAU)

• PG: Urban Design and Cultural Studies (contributing lectures)

• PG: UN-SDG Sustainable Development Goals Seminar

• UG: Cultural Studies (contributing lectures)

• UG: Undergraduate Dissertation Supervision

• UG & PG: Design Studio Teaching (with a focus on community-based design learning)