Liminal Territories in the Name of National Security: The Spatial Production of the Politics of Guantanamo Bay Part 2 Dissertation 2026 Nassra Mohammed Sheffield Hallam University | UK This dissertation investigates Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo) as a liminal territory where architecture, law, sovereignty and space are deliberately reconfigured in the name of national security. Rather than treating Gitmo as an isolated anomaly or solely a humanitarian issue, the dissertation argues that it operates as a prototype through which contemporary practices of Governance, territorial control, and legal ambiguity can be understood.Combining Architectural analysis with political geography, critical theory and forensic visual methods and the lack of it, leads the research examines how detention architecture, territorial organisation and material evidence actively produces and maintains conditions of exception. Through original spatial mappings, analytical diagrams, declassified documents and investigative photography, the dissertation demonstrates that the architecture is not simply the backdrop to sovereign power, but an active participant in its production.Adapting Banfield's spatialities of liminality as an analytical framework, the dissertation translates political theory into spatial analysis, revealing how liminality is constructed through territorial ambiguity, infrastructural design and temporal suspension. It further argues that the logics underpinning Gitmo extend beyond its physical boundaries into contemporary immigration detention, border governance and citizen deprivation.The dissertation develops an original analytical methodology by combining architectural drawing, cartography and forensic visual analysis with political and legal theory to examine liminality as a spatial condition of governance.Ultimately, the dissertation contributes to architectural discourse by demonstrating how liminality operates not only as a conceptual condition but as a spatial and material strategy of governance, challenging architecture's perceived neutrality and revealing its role in the production of contemporary political power. Tutor(s) Helen Stratford