I teach and write about colonialism, political economy, the politics of energy, and the making of expert knowledge. Trained in the fields of law, history, and political theory, I work across the disciplinary boundaries of history and the social sciences. Many of my writings explore materials from the history and contemporary politics of Egypt, where I have conducted research over many years.
In 2026, I published a new book on capitalism, colonialism, and our relationship to the future, examining how we came to organise collective life on the principle of its impoverishment. We live in an age in which extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from unfathomable sources, as when tech firms that have never made a profit are valued at billions of dollars. While seeming extraordinary, this mode of acquiring unearned wealth, the book argues, is commonplace. It is a key to understanding how capitalism came into being and a clue to grasping why the catastrophe of climate collapse has come upon us. Published by Verso Press, the book is titled The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow
Like my earlier works, including Colonising Egypt, Rule of Experts, and Carbon Democracy, the book combines the study of the built world, technical devices, ecological processes, and the history of economic and political concepts.
I am based in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, where I am the William B. Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern Studies . I served as chair of the department from 2011 until my liberation in 2017. I was reappointed as chair in 2026.