Adam Mestyan is a historian of the modern Arab world. He is assistant professor in the History Department of Duke University and a graduate of CEU and ELTE (Budapest). He taught at Oxford University and was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, in addition to holding a number of other fellowships. His most recent monograph, Arab Patriotism: The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2017), offers the first scholarly investigation of the Egyptian khedivate between the 1860s and the 1890s, a period that witnessed a global wave of monarchical restoration and reformation. His forthcoming publication is Primordial History, Khedivial Power, and Ancient Egypt in Modern Cairo (Cairo: Ifao, 2019). He is currently working on a new book, Modern Arab Kingship, about government in the Middle East in the age of capitalist imperialism. Mestyan also supervises Jara’id: A Chronology of Nineteenth-Century Periodicals in Arabic, an online bibliography.
In addition to his academic interests, he was the bass guitarist of the underground band the Galloping Coroners (VHK, Vágtázó Halottkémek) between 1996-2014 and established a number of other Hungarian bands (including Yava Folcore Punk Brigade and Dereng). Mestyan has also published two award-winning books of poems in Hungarian and continues to write poetry. He runs a marathon every year.
(Adam and his partner, Ya-Wen Lei, 2018)