Mark Drury

Political anthropologist, historian of decolonization and scholar of the Sahara, Mark Drury examines how unresolved tensions between anticolonial and nationalist projects continue to shape forms of political mobilization across northwest Africa. His transnational approach to understanding political belonging in this region has taken him to Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, Morocco, Sahrawi refugee camps in Algeria, and Mauritania. This fieldwork, as well as archival research in France and the UK, has been funded by Fulbright, the National Science Foundation, and the American Institute for Maghrib Studies. He has published in Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa and the Middle East and The Journal of North African Studies, among others. As a member of the International Academic Observatory on Western Sahara, Drury has participated in efforts to draw attention to political conditions in Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara. His commentary related to these conditions has appeared online in the Middle East Report and Jadaliyya. Drury received his PhD in anthropology from The Graduate Center, City University of New York; he has previously taught at Princeton and Georgetown University.