Adam Mestyan has two simultaneous research interests: the first is the problem of government and nationalism in Arab polities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; the second is the global urban history of modern Egypt.

The first interest is captured by his current book project (under contract with Princeton University Press), Modern Arab Kingship, a transnational history project about Arabic monarchism and the making of Arab kingdoms from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.

Mestyan’s second interest combines urbanism, social change, and economic history in Egypt and the late Ottoman Empire. This is explored in his next major publication, Primordial History, Khedivial Power, and Ancient Egypt in Modern Cairo (Cairo: Ifao, 2020). He has also launched a new project in the business history of Egypt.

Other past and present projects reflecting these interests include: various writings about Islam and nationalism in the Arab world, the social transformation in the late Ottoman Empire, Arabic theater history, the theory and practice of archives, and the origins of the Arabic public sphere.

Mestyan is equally invested in the Western European cultural history of the nineteenth century, especially posing culture and the making of the bourgeoisie as a global social model.