Faiz Ahmed Visiting Fellow, Spring 2023, Fall 2023
Faiz Ahmed is the Joukowsky Family Distinguished Associate Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History at Brown University. Professor Ahmed specializes in the late Ottoman and British empires, Afghanistan, and diasporic communities tied to the region we today call the Middle East. His core research and teaching engage questions of human mobility, travel, and migration; social histories of Islamic law and learning; and the intersections of constitutionalism, citizenship, and diplomacy.
Dr. Ahmed’s first book, Afghanistan Rising: Islamic Law and Statecraft between the Ottoman and British Empires (Harvard University Press), was awarded the American Historical Association’s John F. Richards Prize in 2018. His current research explores historical ties and engagements of the Ottoman Empire in the Americas, with a focus on social, economic, and legal connections to the United States and Canada during the long nineteenth century. Ahmed’s published articles can be found in journals of law, history, and Middle East Studies, including Law and History Review; Global Jurist; Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East; International History Review;International Journal of Middle East Studies; Iranian Studies; Journal of Ottoman Studies (Osmanlı Araştırmaları);Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association; and Perspectives on History. Featured interviews can be found on national radio and history channels to local news, including NPR’s Throughline, The Boston Globe, ABC6 Rhode Island News, The Toynbee Prize Foundation, Borderlines, and Ottoman History Podcast.
Professor Ahmed is also co-organizer with his Brown University colleagues Michael Vorenberg, Rebecca Nedostup, and Emily Owens of the Brown Legal History Workshop and Brown Legal Studies collaborative. He earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley, and his J.D. from the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.