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Roger Owen

A. J. Meyer Professor of Middle East History

Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 38 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
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Roger Owen
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  • I was born and educated in Great Britain where I received a BA at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1959 and a D.Phil at St Antony’s College Oxford in 1965. I then taught Middle East economic history and, from the late 1970s, Middle East politics at Oxford University until I came to Harvard as the first A.J.Meyer Professor of Middle East History in 1993. I plan to retire from Harvard as an Emeritus Professor on 31 December 2012 but will continue to live in Cambridge, MA.

    I first visited the Middle East while doing my military service in Cyprus, 1955-6, and spent the year, 1962-3 living in Cairo doing research into Egypt’s 19th century agrarian history and teaching English at the American University of Cairo. Since then I have lived for a year in Lebanon and visited all the other Arab countries for shorter periods, many of them a large number of times. I have written a regular column for the Arabic Newspaper, Al-Hayat, since the late 1980s.

  • Bio
  • Classes
  • Publications
  • Middle East in WW I

Recent Publications

  • The Political Economy of Arab Presidents for Life - and After
  • The Rise and Fall of Arab Presidents for Life
  • British and French Military Intelligence in Syria and Palestine, 1914-1918: Myths and Reality
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