As a Chartered Member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), I have twenty years of industry experience and a multi-billion-dollar built project portfolio. Ten years were spent in practice in the UK and ten in the Middle East. As Director of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Studios, I established and directed three regional design offices, providing me and this research project with a knowledge base of British and international working methods and professional standards. My professional experience has facilitated a solid commercial understanding of the sites of enquiry and enabled continued access to industry and government.

This period in industry advanced my hard skills in client and stakeholder management, architectural service design, professional service and construction contracts, business development, and commercial and operational strategy. Establishing an early presence in so-called “emerging” and “frontier” markets, involvement in British government trade delegations, and familiarity with diverse clients imparted the importance of professional standards, relationships and care. Adapting diasporic professional services frameworks to local contexts and participating in the RIBA’s International Chartered Practice Pilot Scheme has enhanced this unique perspective. Above all, these experiences have informed my sincere respect for diverse cultures and practices and sparked my profound desire to redeploy this knowledge to make a positive social contribution. Thus, it was my intent to return to the UK and academia for reflection and engagement with the social responsibilities of architectural professional practice.

Drawing on my personal experience, this autoethnographic research project began with a critical reflection on the RIBA International Chartered Practice in the Middle East region. Since establishing trade in architectural services in the 1970s, British architects have maintained a strong presence in the UAE, attested to by the recent introduction of the RIBA International Chartered Practice status to certify standards of British practices internationally. In Dubai, the newly opened RIBA office (RIBA, 2019a) marked the institution's first establishment of operations outside the UK. The RIBA Gulf Chapter represents the professional membership body in the Middle East region, the largest export market for British architecture. Unfortunately, there are several international human rights and labour rights treaties, such as those endorsed by the ILO and OECD, to which the UAE is not a signatory. This, combined with the lack of statistical data on labour standards, which these organisations publish, means that architects working in this area are exposed to the risk of contravening their direct and fiduciary responsibilities in an important commercial market.

My research interests lie in revealing the complexity of seemingly straightforward scenarios, such as the RIBA Code of Professional Conduct, using visual tools as a research method to draw out relationships and paradoxes. Despite taking an unconventional academic route, my strengths are divergent thinking, conceptual expansion, and overcoming knowledge constraints. I am neurodiverse, and as a result, my soft skills have developed to compensate for traditional academic and social limitations. I feel most comfortable inhabiting the edges and hold equality, morality, and justice as central societal values; hence they are the subjects of my academic work. My research interest lies in revealing the complexity of seemingly straightforward scenarios, using visual tools as a research method to draw out relationships and paradoxes. Having stepped from practice to academia, I intend to commit to reflection through a critical analysis of experience in practice. The project works towards legitimacy across disciplines by instrumentalising practical knowledge in academia and, in doing so, extending its agency and impact.

Whilst my experiences in practice have enabled me to make connections across boundaries, my approach through inverse thinking has clarified my research objectives and helped me to deal with complexity. My experience in architectural practice has provided me and this research project with a grounded knowledge of British and international working methods and professional standards. My adaptation of diasporic professional services frameworks to local contexts has enhanced this unique perspective.