Samuel Dolbee

Samuel Dolbee received his PhD in history and Middle Eastern and Islamic studies from New York University in 2017. His book project, Borders of Cultivation, illuminates the social and environmental history of motion in the borderland region of Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, known as the Jazira. The project explores how the paths of locusts and nomads, insecticides and Armenian refugees offer an alternative history of the transition from the Ottoman Empire to post-Ottoman nation-states. His broader research explores the intersection of human politics, the non-human world, space, and knowledge. He joins the Mahindra Center following a research fellowship at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies at Brandeis University in 2017-18; his research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, among others.