Ko, Nancy

Field: Middle East; Advisor: Khalidi and Kobrin; Year: 2019

Nancy Ko is a historian of environment and capitalism pursuing her PhD in the Department of History at Columbia University. Her research explores the relationship between memory, amnesia, and state-building in the global Mediterranean. 

Nancy's work has been supported by the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC), the American Academy for Jewish Research (AAJR), and the PD Soros Fellowship for New Americans, among other sources.

Prior to beginning her studies at Columbia, Nancy read an MPhil in Modern Middle East Studies at the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and a B.A. from Harvard University, where she was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and an undergraduate fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics. Nancy has taught topics across history and philosophy at Columbia, Harvard, and Ca'Foscari Universities, for which she was granted a Derek Bok Teaching Award in 2021. In the 2020-21 academic year, Nancy served as co-president of the Graduate History Association.

Nancy can be spotted—though never often enough—at her family's bodega in south Brooklyn, where she grew up. Hear her in conversation with recent authors in History, Critical Theory, and Jewish and Middle East Studies over at the New Books Network.

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