An historian of Africa and the Middle East, I combine political and administrative history with the history of economic expertise in order to interrogate the postcolonial state.  I am interested in reconstructing the competing and overlapping visions of political and economic community held by elites. My dissertation and future research explore how the history of economics as well as science and technology studies can be mobilized in order to understand the belief that the territorially bounded state formed the most advantageous site for political and economic development.  During my postdoctoral fellowship at UPenn, I intend to examine the growing disillusionment after the Revolution of 1964 with the Sudanese state as a vehicle through which political, social and economic transformations could be realized and the search for alternatives forms of community.