Specialization:
agrarian studies, food systems, Israel/Palestine, labor, law, Middle East and North Africa, political ecology, settler colonialism
Education:
Ph.D, Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, 2019.
M.A., Anthropology, Johns Hopkins University, 2015.
B.A., History, University of Southern California, 2007.
Bio:
Paul Kohlbry is an anthropologist and Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research brings together critical agrarian studies, political ecology, and legal anthropology. He has worked on questions of peasant agriculture, property law, land politics, anti-colonialism, and agrarian transformation. Since 2013 he has carried out archival research and ethnographic fieldwork in the Middle East, primarily in Palestine and Israel. His scholarship has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Palestinian American Research Center, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and others. Before arriving at UCSB, Paul held postdoctoral positions at Brown University, the University of Chicago, and Cornell University.
Publications:
Book
Plots and Deeds: Agrarian Annihilation and the Fight for Land Justice in Palestine. Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2026.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
“Titling in the Ruins: Progress, Deferral, and Non-Sovereign Property.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 43.3: 262–274, 2023.
“Selling Rural Palestine: Land Devaluation, Ethical Investment, and the Limits of Human Rights.” Antipode 55.3: 897–915, 2023.
“To Cover the Land in Green: Rainfed Agriculture and Anti-Colonial Land Reclamation in Palestine.” Journal of Peasant Studies 50.7: 2666–2684, 2023.
“Palestinian Counter-forensics and the Cruel Paradox of Property.” American Ethnologist 49.3: 374–386, 2022.
“Owning the Homeland: Property, Markets, and Land Defense in the West Bank.” Journal of Palestine Studies 47.4: 30–45, 2018.
Book Chapters
with Gabi Kirk, “Situating the Transnational in Rural Palestine.” Resisting Domination in Palestine: New Techniques of Control, Coloniality and Settler Colonialism, eds. Alaa Tartir, Tariq Dana, and Timothy Seidel, I.B. Tauris/Bloomsberry, 2024.
Essays and Reviews
Jessica Barnes, Staple Security. In Arab Studies Journal 32.2, 65–69, 2024.
“Agrarian Annihilation.” Agrarian Conversations. January 12, 2024.
with Beshara Doumani, “Introduction: Claiming Property, Claiming Palestine.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 43.3: 245–48, 2023.
Greg Burris, The Palestinian Idea. In International Journal of Middle East Studies 52.2, 382–384, 2020.
Shir Hever, The Political Economy of Israel’s Occupation. In Historical Materialism 24.3, 206–216, 2016.
Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy and Rule of Experts. In Dialectical Anthropology 37, 477–489, 2013.