Kristen Alff works as Assistant Professor of History and International Studies at North Carolina State University. She previously held the positions of Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia and Lecturer at Stanford University. Kristen Alff earned her first MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the American University in Cairo. She earned her PhD from Stanford University in Modern Middle East History in 2019. Alff’s current book project argues that Levantine joint-stock companies shaped the character of global capitalism in 19th and early 20th centuries. Kristen’s second book traces the process by which local real estate companies acquired land in late Ottoman Palestine and sold this land to Jewish purchasing agents in the post-World War I period.. Alff’s previous research was on Kurdish nationalism and minority identities in Mandate Iraq.
Kristen’s work has been published in leading journals such as Comparative Studies in Society and History and Enterprise and Society. Her work can also be found in the recent volume Critical Political Economy of the Middle East and North Africa and the International Journal for Middle East Studies. Kristen has also published in public forums such as The Conversation and The Economic Historian. Alff’s research is based on over ten years of primary and secondary source reading in English, French, German, Hebrew, Ottoman Turkish, Turkish, and Arabic.
Kristen has spent the majority of her adult life living in Germany, Japan, and Egypt. When she is not teaching or writing, she enjoys running. Kristen Alff was 2009 women’s winner of the Egyptian national marathon, and now enjoys cross-training and weightlifting.
CV (2024) HERE