About

I am a historian of the modern Middle East. My primary research interests are the histories of law and capitalism in nineteenth-century Egypt. My book How Commerce Became Legal: Merchants and Market Governance in Nineteenth-Century Egypt was published by Stanford University Press in September 2025. My academic publications have appeared in Past & Present, International Journal of Middle East Studies, History Compass and The Oxford Handbook of Modern Egyptian History. My research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, the Social Science Research Council, among others.

I am an assistant professor of history at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship. Previously, I taught at Bard College, and was among the team that founded the Economic and Business History Research Center in Cairo.

I earned a B.A. in Economics from the American University in Cairo, an A.M. in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Chicago, and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies, and History from New York University.

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