Craig Birckhead-Morton is an MA student in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. He completed his BA in History with a concentration in Empires and Colonialism at Yale University in 2020. His research focuses on nationalist and Marxist responses to colonialism and underdevelopment in Arab and Persianate West Asia.

His undergraduate thesis, Egyptianizing Colonialism: Contesting Arab Unity and National Liberation in the Era of Nasserism, 1954-1964, assesses the internal contradictions within the former United Arab Republic and narrates the Nasserist era as a period in which the nationalist regime actively reinforced colonial social relations in Egypt and Syria.

Craig is also a published author in The New Arab, Middle East Eye, and the Institute for Palestine Studies’ Palestine Square.