Ahmad Shokr

Topics of Interest:
State Formation, Decolonization, Nationalism, History of Capitalism, Commodities, Social Movements, History of Economic Thought

Countries/Regions of Interest:
Middle East, South Asia, Egypt

List of Publications

Selected Works:
Review of Nancy Y. Reynolds, A City Consumed: Urban Commerce, the Cairo Fire, and the Politics of Decolonization in Egypt (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012) in International Journal of Middle East Studies, 46, No. 4 (November 2014) (forthcoming)

“Libya.” Co-authored with Anjali Kamat. Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East. Paul Amar and Vijay Prashad, eds. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 157-203.

“Reflections on Two Revolutions.” Middle East Report, No. 265 (Winter 2012), 2-12

“The 18 days of Tahrir.” Middle East Report, No. 258 (Spring 2011). Republished in The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt. Jeannie Sowers and Chris Toensing, eds. (London: Verso, 2012), 41-46

“Libya’s Reformist Revolutionaries.” Co-authored with Anjali Kamat. Economic and Political Weekly, XLVI, No. 12 (March 19, 2011), 13-14

“The Price of Stability: Egypt’s Democratic Uprising.” Economic and Political Weekly, XLVI, No.7 (February17, 2011), 10-12

“Hydropolitics, Economy, and the Aswan High Dam in Mid-Century Egypt.” Arab Studies Journal XVII, No. 1 (Spring 2009), 9-31

Ahmad Shokr is a doctoral candidate in NYU’s Joint Program in History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. His areas of research include the history of the modern Middle East, the political economy of empire and decolonization, the history of economic thought, the global history of development, environmental history, and postcolonial state formation. He is currently completing his dissertation, entitled “Beyond the Fields: Cotton and the End of Empire in Egypt, 1919-1956,” which is a study of the relationship between state power and economic management in the era of decolonization. Set in Egypt during the interwar and early postwar years, "Beyond the Fields" looks at transformations in the world of infrastructure around cotton—how it was financed, transported, marketed, and exported—as a lens to understand changing forms and technologies of the state and geographies of state power, the politics of postcolonial economic nationalism, and the unmaking of imperial globalization during this period.

Shokr holds an Honors BA from the University of Toronto, with a major in History and minors Economics and World Literature. He also holds  an MA in Near Eastern Studies from NYU. He is a book review editor for the Arab Studies Journal and a former senior editor at Egypt Independent, which was the English-language edition of one of the largest circulating dailies in Egypt. His writings on historical and contemporary political issues have appeared in Arab Studies Journal, Middle East Report, Jadaliyya, and Economic and Political Weekly. He is also a contributor to several volumes, including Dispatches from the Arab Spring: Understanding the New Middle East (University of Minnesota Press, 2013) and The Journey to Tahrir: Revolution, Protest, and Social Change in Egypt(Verso, 2012).