Joseph DeRosa

Faculty of History, St. Hugh’s College

Start year: 2022

Preliminary Thesis title: Beni Britannica: A study of Bedouin Legions and the British Empire (1920-1956)

Supervisor: Professor Eugene Rogan

Joseph’s research lies at the intersection of nomadic peoples, empire, state formation, and the policing of desert spaces in Iraq, Transjordan, Yemen, Oman, and the Trucial States (modern-day UAE). He is interested in how desert police forces appropriated the functions of tribe (e.g. security, livelihood, identity) to establish new and newly intrusive forms of governance in familiar idioms.

Before beginning his doctoral research, Joseph spent 5+ years working in the private sector in the Middle East. He also received an MA/MSc at Columbia University/LSE (2016-18), funded in part through a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. Previously, he received a BA in History from Wake Forest University (2010-14), where he received the Richard Worden Griffin Research Prize in History. He was once a competitive chess player.