University of California, Berkeley

Post-Doc, Center for the Tebtunis Papyri

Thesis Title: Watering the Desert: Environment, Irrigation and Society in the Premodern Fayyum

About

I'm a recent PhD at Berkeley, having just finished an environmental-historical dissertation on Egypt's Fayyum depression covering the 3rd century BCE to the 13th century CE.  The project is a study of landscape change and settlement shift focusing on the environmental and social aspects of irrigation in a marginal environment, human mobility, and land degradation.

The central question behind this project is "how do we build relationships with land and water that endure?"  I argue against earlier state-centric approaches to ancient Egyptian irrigation, which anachronistically retroject the modern Egyptian state's central role in irrigation onto the past.  Instead, I stress the localism of water management and the need to pay keen attention to the particularities of local environments. Since my work takes a longue durée perspective, I'm less concerned with the problematitic notion of sustainability and more so with (trying to) identify the underlying features of adaptable, resilient socionatural relationships that have proven able to change and adapt over the long term. 

I’m also interested in the history of environmentalism and environmental thinking from the 19th century until today.  In particular, I focus on the environmental justifications for European colonialism and the on-the-ground effects of colonial environmental knowledge and resource management policies in Egypt and the Arab world. 

My hobby interest in the American West centers on water and environmental politics.  I'm a lifelong westerner and am concerned about the future of water intensive urbanism and agrobusiness in this arid region.