Peter Habib

Research interests: Environment; Migration; Nationalism; Humanitarianism; Water; Infrastructure; Political Ecology; Political Anthropology; Anthropology of Middle East

Bio: Peter Habib is an Hicham Alaoui Postdoctoral Fellow in Harvard’s Weatherhead Scholar Program and holds a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Emory University. His work explores how ruinous environmental realities become appropriated into politicized narratives in the Middle East, often serving exclusionary nationalist purposes.

Research Summary: Trained as an anthropologist and ethnographer, my research is largely based in the Middle East and investigates how concerns of the environment shape political life. My first book explores the entanglement of water politics and refugee life in Lebanon. As concerns of water scarcity grows amid protracted refugee settlement and economic collapse, water has become a material and metaphorical lens to examine political belonging and inequality between Lebanese and displaced Syrians. More than a cause of tension, I am interested in how resource provision can become the grounds for forging relations across difference for residents living in precarious yet shared material and ecological conditions.