Waldau, Brandon

Brandon Thomas Waldau is a PhD student in international and global history at Columbia University, interested in histories of Perso-Arabic print culture, print technology, and knowledge production across North America, the Middle East, and South Asia. His current research project has centered around mechanized typesetting, specifically the Mergenthaler Linotype Machine, and other forms of technology utilized for printing both naskh and nastaliq in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

He is also the current convener of the Siyagh Middle Eastern and Islamic History Workshop and the International and Global History Workshop (sponsored by the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy), and is engaged in a cataloguing project of Said Nafisi’s collection housed in Butler Library. Brandon has also worked as curatorial assistant and archivist for the Los Angeles-based community arts organization, Visual Communications, as well as Ajam Digital Archive.

Brandon holds a BA in History and Arabic & Arabic World Studies from Bucknell University (2022), and a MA in Near Eastern Studies from the Kevorkian Center at New York University (2024).