Timothy Mitchell

William B. Ransford Professor of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies

Email: tm2421@columbia.edu

Political theory and history; Colonialism; Technology; Expert knowledge; Political economy; Politics of energy; Egypt; technopolitics

Timothy Mitchell writes about colonialism, political economy, the politics of energy, and the making of expert knowledge. Trained in the fields of law, history, and political theory, he works across the disciplinary boundaries of history and the social sciences. Many of his writings explore materials from the history and contemporary politics of Egypt, where he has conducted research over many years.

He is based at Columbia in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies. He also teaches occasionally in SIPA, where his courses explore what he calls technopolitics:  how forms of technical and economic knowledge that claim to master the present and provide a path to the future repeatedly turn out to be speculative, misguided, or damaging.