Joseph Sassoon

Joseph Sassoon is the director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Professor of History and Political Economy at Georgetown University. He holds the al-Sabah Chair in Politics and Political Economy of the Arab World. He is also a Senior Associate Member at St Antony’s College, Oxford. In 2013, his book Saddam Hussein’s Ba‘th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge University Press, 2012) won the prestigious British-Kuwait Prize for the best book on the Middle East.

Sassoon completed his Ph.D at St Antony’s College, Oxford. He has published extensively on Iraq and its economy and on the Middle East. His latest book is titled: The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire (Pantheon, 2022)