Dr Nathaniel George

Nathaniel George is Lecturer in Politics of the Middle East at SOAS, University of London. He is a global political historian of the modern Arab world and United States foreign relations. His research and teaching focus on the relationship between revolution, counterrevolution, sectarianism, and empire. Prior to joining SOAS, he was a Raphael Morrison Dorman Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the Ibrahim Abu-Lughod Fellow at Columbia University’s Center for Palestine Studies. He holds a PhD in History from Rice University, an MA in Middle East Studies from the American University of Beirut, and a BA in Cinema from the University of Iowa.

His research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation, among others. His writings have been translated into Arabic and Spanish, and have appeared in The Fate of Third Worldism in the Middle East: Iran, Palestine and Beyond, Arab Studies Journal, Bidayat, The Arab Lefts: Histories and Legacies, America in the World, 1776 to the Present, and Armed by Design/El Diseño a las Armas.

In 2023–24, Nathaniel convenes the modules Israel/Palestine and the International (undergraduate) and Sectarianism and Colonial Difference (postgraduate) and is the Co-Coordinator of Postgraduate Student Experience.

Nathaniel is not currently taking PhD students

Politics and history of the modern Arab world, particularly Lebanon, Palestine, and the mashriq; global and international history; revolution and counterrevolution; imperialism and colonialism; sectarianism, racism, and colonial social difference; the United States in the world.

His first book project, A Third World War: Revolution, Counterrevolution, and Empire in Lebanon, 1967–1982, lies at the intersection of global political and intellectual history, challenging depictions of the Lebanese civil war as an internal sectarian conflict or a proxy 'war of others.' Instead, it understands Lebanon as an important setting in an international civil war over the direction of decolonization and the shape of political representation in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Many of his publications can be viewed on his academia.edu profile.

ORCID: 0000-0002-6216-628X

Office Hours Bookings: Book time with Nathaniel George