Timothy Mitchell

Focus areas: Middle East politics, colonialism, energy politics, histories of capitalism, politics of expertise

Timothy Mitchell writes about colonialism, political economy, the politics of energy, and the making of expert knowledge. Trained 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 many years.

He is based at Columbia in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies. He also teaches occasionally in SIPA, where his courses explore what he calls technopolitics:  how forms of technical and economic knowledge that claim to master the present and provide a path to the future repeatedly turn out to be speculative, misguided, or damaging.

For more information, please visit his personal academic website.

Education

• PhD in Politics and Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University
• First Class Honors Degree in History, Queens' College, Cambridge

Honors and Awards

• Distinguished Scholar Award, Theory Section, International Studies Association, 2018
• Ester Boserup Prize, University of Copenhagen, for outstanding research on development and economic history, 2017