Dr Weston Bland

I am a historian of the modern Middle East with research interests in the history of Egypt and Christianity in the Middle East. I focus in particular on the social, political, and religious history of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox community in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I received my PhD from the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of
Pennsylvania in 2024. I am currently a post-doctoral Research Associate on the Moving Stories: Sectarianisms in the Global Middle East project.

Research Interests

I am interested in the development of ideas of community among Middle Eastern Christians in the modern era. My research explores how evolving conceptions of community have been shaped by institutional structures, sectarianism, violence, mobility, and governance. My doctoral research explored how the liberal-democratic ideals of Egypt’s post-independence parliamentary era shaped Coptic communal life from the early to the mid-twentieth century by placing popular representation on a communal level at the forefront of Coptic discourse, prompting both tensions and efforts at fusion between liberalism and Orthodoxy. I am currently developing this research into a monograph that highlights the development of the Coptic communal sphere as an alternative site of politics to the Egyptian national sphere. Alongside this project, I am conducting early-stage research for long-term research projects on the intellectual trajectory of the Coptic intellectual Salama Musa and the role that Egypt has played in the transmission of knowledge on Ethiopian Christianity.