About Ronay Bakan

Ronay Bakan is a Ph.D. student at the Department of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University.

NBN Episodes hosted by Ronay:

Eray Çayli, "Earthmoving: Extractivism, War, and Visuality in Northern Kurdistan" (U Texas Press, 2025)

February 20, 2026

Earthmoving

Eray Çayli
Hosted by Ronay Bakan

Extractivism—exploiting the earth for resources—has long driven racial capitalism and colonialism. And yet, how does extractivism operate in a world w…

Jillian Schwedler, "Protesting Jordan: Geographies of Power and Dissent" (Stanford UP, 2022)

November 30, 2022

Protesting Jordan

Jillian Schwedler
Hosted by Ronay Bakan

Protest has been a key method of political claim-making in Jordan from the late Ottoman period to the present day. More than moments of rupture within…

Jonathan Wyrtzen, "Worldmaking in the Long Great War: How Local and Colonial Struggles Shaped the Modern Middle East" (Columbia UP, 2022)

September 9, 2022

Worldmaking in the Long Great War

Jonathan Wyrtzen
Hosted by Ronay Bakan

It is widely believed that the political problems of the Middle East date back to the era of World War I, when European colonial powers unilaterally i…

David Leupold, "Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory" (Routledge, 2020)

January 18, 2022

Embattled Dreamlands

David Leupold
Hosted by Ronay Bakan

Embattled Dreamlands: The Politics of Contesting Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish Memory (Routledge, 2020) explores the complex relationship between comp…