Michael Christopher Low

Michael Christopher Low is a Ph.D. candidate in International and Global History at Columbia University in New York.  His research interests include the pilgrimage to Mecca, epidemic disease, hydropolitics, passports and mobility regulation, the Ottoman Empire, the Arabian Peninsula, and Islam in the Indian Ocean.  He is currently conducting research in Istanbul for his dissertation project, “Governing Islam: The Muslim Holy Land and the World of Empire.”  His publications include “Mecca: Pilgrimage and the Making of the Islamic World, 400-1500,” in Aran MacKinnon and Elaine McClarnard MacKinnon, eds., Places of Encounter: Time, Place, and Connectivity in World History, vol. 1 (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2012) and “Empire and the Hajj: Pilgrims, Plagues, and Pan-Islam under British Surveillance, 1865-1908,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40, no. 2 (May, 2008): 269-290.