Graduate Student, Anthropology
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
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Steven Caton
Engseng Ho Asad Ahmed |
About
Research agenda:
My research is broadly concerned with the relationship between three themes: empire, war, and encounters between people from different (non-western) regions and cultures. I have been exploring these themes through research on Arab Muslim travelers and immigrants in non-Arab Muslim societies experiencing armed conflict, especially fighters and aid workers in Afghanistan in the 1980s and Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s (often referred to as "Afghan Arabs" or "foreign fighters"). The latter is the primary site for my ongoing dissertation research, which situates these movements in the history of linkages between the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Europe.
Related to my work on transnational Islamist movements is a concern with understanding evolving forms of the transnational use of violence and coercion by the U.S. national security state. Drawing on my legal training, I focus on various forms of proxy detention and rendition targeting transnational Muslim populations, as well as legal rationales conflating categories of external and internal warfare under a broader logic of global civil war.
Law teaching interests: Law & Empire, International Human Rights Law, Laws of War, U.S. National Security Law, Evidence, Civil Procedure, Comparative Citizenship/Immigration/Nationality Law.
My research is funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and by Harvard University.
I am a signatory of the "Pledge of Non-Participation in Counter-insurgency" circulated by the Network of Concerned Anthropologists: https://sites.google.com/site/concernedanthropologists/
Contact Information
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