Michael Christopher Low

Biography

Michael Christopher Low specializes in Late Ottoman, Modern Middle Eastern, and Environmental History. He received his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2015 and is currently working on a book manuscript, The Mechanics of Mecca: The Ottoman Hijaz and the Indian Ocean Hajj. Drawing on Ottoman and British archival sources as well as published materials in Arabic and modern Turkish, Professor Low’s project analyzes how the Hijaz and the steamship-era pilgrimage to Mecca simultaneously became objects of Ottoman modernization, global public health, international law, and inter-imperial competition during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In addition to his book manuscript, Professor Low is also working on several other projects in environmental and technological history, including Ottoman petroleum exploration, Ottoman electric infrastructure, and the transnational history of desalination technology and expertise in the United States, Saudi Arabia, and the wider Middle East. His articles, reviews, and commentary have appeared (or are forthcoming) in the Arab Studies Journal; Comparative Studies in Society and History; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East; the International Journal of Middle East Studies; Jadaliyya; the Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association; the Ottoman History Podcast; and the Review of Middle East Studies. Professor Low’s language training and research have been supported by the American Institute for Yemeni Studies, the Institute of Turkish Studies, Columbia University’s Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life, and the David L. Boren National Security Education Program. In the summer of 2016, he was a Visiting Senior Fellow at Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul. In 2016, his article, “Ottoman Infrastructures of the Saudi Hydro-State: The Technopolitics of Pilgrimage and Potable Water in the Hijaz,” received the American Society for Environmental History’s Alice Hamilton article prize.

Research Interest

Environmental History, global public health and international law.