SCOTT T. ERICH

Scott Thomas Erich is the Howell Postdoctoral Research Associate in Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia. Scott is a historical and environmental anthropologist who received his PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2023. His dissertation, "Extraction, Property, and Rights in Southeastern Arabian Seascapes c. 1820-present" is an ethnographic and historical examination of how fishermen, local rulers, colonial officials, states, and private companies claim rights to oceanic “territory” and extract marine natural resources – including pearls, fish, sponges, and oil – from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.

Scott is a recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award and the Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar at the American University of Sharjah, U.A.E., and a Fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs in Muscat, Oman. He has worked at the University of Chicago, the Middle East Institute, and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, and taught as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Baruch College from 2017-2023. 

RECENT WORK

"A deeper history of the 'world's largest dead zone' in the Gulf of Oman," in the International Review of Environmental History 9, no. 1 (2023)

Interview with Steve Mentz about An Introduction to the Blue Humanities (New York: Routledge, 2023), on the New Books in the Indian Ocean World podcast.

"Fishing in the Shadow of Oil," for Sapiens, a magazine published by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and University of Chicago Press

CONTACT

serich [at] gradcenter.cuny.edu