What nationality was Zaha Hadid?

Zaha Hadid was British-Iraqi: she was born in Iraq and later became a naturalised British citizen.

Hadid was born on 31 October 1950 in Baghdad, then part of the Kingdom of Iraq, into an Iraqi family with roots in Mosul. She studied mathematics at the American University of Beirut before moving to London in 1972 to attend the Architectural Association School of Architecture.

Her professional life was based largely in the United Kingdom. She founded Zaha Hadid Architects in London in 1980 and became a naturalised citizen of the United Kingdom. This dual national identity is why reliable biographies commonly describe her as an Iraqi-British or British-Iraqi architect.

Nationality is sometimes confused with birthplace, ethnicity, or professional base. Hadid was not Saudi, American, or Iranian: her career became strongly associated with Britain, but her Iraqi birth and identity remained central to her biography. In 2004, she became the first woman to receive the Pritzker Architecture Prize in her own right.