Timothy Mitchell
Timothy Mitchell is the William B. Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University. He served as Chair of the MESAAS Department from 2011 to 2017. Before joining the Columbia faculty in 2008, he taught for 25 years at New York University. Educated at the University of Cambridge and Princeton University in the fields of law, history, and political theory, he works across the disciplinary boundaries of history and the social sciences. Many of his writings explore materials from the history and contemporary politics of Egypt, where he has conducted research over more than four decades. His writings, which have been translated into Arabic and 15 other languages, examine the history of colonialism, the politics of energy, the political economy of capitalism, and the making of expert knowledge. His books include Colonising Egypt, Rule of Experts, and Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil.