Fredrick (Walter) Lorenz, Ph.D.

Dr. Lorenz is a historian of Africa and the Middle East, whose research focuses on migration, settlement, and imperialism in the late Ottoman Empire. His first book project, tentatively titled The Second Egypt: Ottoman Settlerism in Libya, 1835-1912, examines the making of the ‘Second Egypt’ in Ottoman Libya by investigating the roles of migrants, refugees, and exiles in transforming Cyrenaica into a cultivatable and lucrative commercial center along the African hinterland and Mediterranean coast.

His second book project, tentatively titled Ottoman Africa in the Age of Migration, 1800-1923, constitutes an extension of his research agenda on migration and centers Africa and the Global South within larger nineteenth- and twentieth-century global migration patterns. This project repositions Africa in a larger geography between the Middle East and South Asia by raising a new set of questions concerning the role of transimperial diplomacy, migration, and settlement in Sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa.  His future publications and research agenda reinforce his ongoing initiative to incorporate a transimperial perspective into the historiography of the Global South and consider the voices of migrants, refugees, and historically understudied populations in Africa.

He has published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and the Journal of World History. Dr. Lorenz teaches courses on African History, Ottoman History, World History, and transregional migration and displacement.

• Ph.D., History, University of California, Los Angeles
• M.A., History, Indiana University
• M.A., Near Eastern Cultures and Languages, Indiana University
• B.A., Middle Eastern Studies, Georgia State University
• B.S., Biochemistry, State University of New York College at Geneseo

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles:

“Agents, Ambassadors, and Imams: Ottoman-British Transimperialism in the Cape of Good Hope, 1862-1869. Journal of World History (forthcoming)”

“The Second Egypt’: Cretan Refugees, Agricultural Development, and Frontier Expansion in Ottoman Cyrenaica, 1897-1904.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 53 (2021): 89-105.”