Ben Kaplow

Benjamin Kaplow is a political, environmental, and comparative-historical sociologist whose research examines resource politics, state building, and colonial legacies in North Africa, particularly Morocco and Algeria. Drawing on archival, qualitative, quantitative, and geospatial methods, he studies how colonial land policies, agricultural development, and resource governance have shaped postcolonial state formation, environmental politics, and local development. He received his PhD in Sociology from Yale University in 2025 and was previously a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor.

Research Interests: Colonization and decolonization; North Africa; land policy and the environment; political economy of natural resources; and state building.