Writing

I am currently writing two book-length reappraisals of recent world history. Both are explorations of the ongoing struggle for greater human freedom, whose conclusions I intend to be actionable in the present. The first charts the rise and fall of revolutionary anticolonialism in the course of the twentieth century. In it, I argue that anticolonialism shaped the contemporary world to an extent comparable to better-recognised doctrines such as liberalism, communism, and fascism. This project is supported by a multi-year grant from the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. My second book-in-progess is an investigation of the destabilising periphery of post-imperial Europe. Its narrative reveals the under-appreciated dynamics connecting the recent histories of North Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe.

Mecca of Revolution

My first book, Mecca of Revolution: Algeria, Decolonization, and the Third World Order (Oxford University Press, 2016) placed the Algerian Revolution, 1954-65, at the center of the global history of decolonisation. The book showed that Algeria was a remarkable site of international anticolonial radicalisation in the 1950s and 1960s: a world-reaching entrepôt of subversion and political imagination. Algeria was also a fascinating, successful practitioner of anticolonialism as an international relations doctrine. As with all of my scholarship, to write Mecca of Revolution I conducted research in a large number of countries, including Algeria itself and several other sites in the "Third World" or "Global South". With this evidence, I proved that international anticolonial solidarities shaped our world in underappreciated ways. The book received the American Historical Association’s Jerry Bentley Prize in world-scale history. It was also honoured as one of the year's best books in African Studies and Maghrib Studies.

Additionally, I regularly publish shorter-form academic writing in a wide variety of academic journals and essay collections, such as Diplomatic History, The International Journal of Middle East Studies, The International History Review, and Rivista Italiana di Storia Internazionale.