Theorist, Researcher, and Educator

I am a political, environmental, and comparative-historical sociologist, specializing in resource politics and state-building in colonial and postcolonial North Africa.

My research combines archival, qualitative, quantitative, and geospatial methods to explore the links between colonial resource politics and postcolonial agricultural development. Bringing together social theory with micro-historical and spatial analysis, I explore the complex interaction of political institutions and agency to explain the legacies of colonial rule in state formation, land reform, and local development in Morocco.

Separately, I have a longstanding interest in the formation and development of contemporary new religious movements.

I received my PhD in Sociology from Yale University in 2025 and am currently on the Job Market.

benjamin.kaplow@yale.edu