On Barak is a social and cultural historian of science and technology in non-Western settings. In recent years he specialize in the history and current politics of the climate crisis in the Middle East and the Global South. He is a Professor of Middle Eastern & African History at Tel Aviv University, and the author of numerous articles and five books. Barak is a co-founder of the Laboratory for the History of the Climate Crisis at Tel Aviv University, a research and teaching platform for generating a “usable past” for humanity’s greatest challenge in the twenty-first century. He also co-founded the Social History Workshop, a weekly blog published on the Haaretz website analyzing current Middle Eastern affairs through the lens of contemporary historical research. Prior to joining Tel Aviv University, Barak was a member of the Princeton Society of Fellows and a lecturer at the history department at Princeton University. In 2009, he received a joint Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern Studies from New York University. He also holds an M.A. in Islamic Studies from Leiden University, the Netherlands, and Joint LL.B. and B.A. in Law and Arabic Language & Literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
