About

Project Wasta was created by Amy Fallas and Tyler Kynn, two Phd students at different ends of their respective programs but with similar questions about the mysteries of the job market after grad school. This is the type of forum and medium which we wish had existed since the start of our time in the Middle East-related Academic world. We realized that most of our knowledge about life after grad school and the tricks of the trade seemed to be based on ad hoc conversations with peers. In response to this, we decided to create a podcast that provided a platform for a systematic series of conversations about the Middle East PhD job market and the experiences which define it. It is our hope that this podcast will be as illuminating and helpful to our listeners as it is to us.

Amy Fallas – UC Santa Barbra (https://www.history.ucsb.edu/graduate-student/amyfallas/)

“I am a historian of the Modern Middle East and late Ottoman Empire from the late nineteenth into the twentieth centuries. I received my MA from Yale University in 2018 with a thesis exploring the domain of religious diplomacy between foreign missionaries in Egypt and their co-religionists.

My current research examines the transnational and interfaith encounters between Anglo-American ecumenists and Coptic and Muslim benevolent societies in Egypt from the late nineteenth century into the interwar period. I focus on the networks established through philanthropic societies and ecumenical organizations and how these relationships reconstituted new forms of lay participation, elite activism, and national belonging.

In addition to my academic work, I’m also a freelance writer on religion and politics in the modern Middle East, U.S. foreign policy in the region, and the Arab diaspora in the Americas.”

Tyler Kynn – Yale University (https://history.yale.edu/people/tyler-kynn)

“I am an ABD Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History. I was born in Minnesota and grew up just outside of Minneapolis. Ever since the fourth grade I have been fascinated in history and eventually found myself determined to study the history of the Ottoman Empire and the larger Islamic world.

My research interests revolve around issues of identity and loyalty (confessional, ethnic, imperial) in the early modern Islamic world, hajj travel accounts, inter-imperial travelers, Ottoman seventeenth-century history, as well as, early modern Safavid and Mughal history.

My dissertation is preliminary titled “Encounters of Islam and Empire: The Hajj in the Early Modern World.” My research took me to India (New Delhi, Lucknow, Surat, Mumbai), Saudi Arabia (Riyadh, Jeddah), the UK (London), Morocco (Rabat), and Turkey (Istanbul).

When I am not reading history I enjoy traveling (as my research interests might suggest), hanging out with my partner Jamie, following baseball, being a proud Hufflepuff, taking photos of my grumpy cat Ollivander, learning how to ref Roller Derby, going on road trips, and occasionally making super niche obscure podcasts.”

Our intro Music is taken from the intro of the song “Sorun Yok” by the music collective bANDiSTA (which is provides all of their music through CopyLeft licensing)