Dr. Thomas Meaney

Thomas Meaney is an American writer who contributes reportage and essays to the New Yorker magazine, the London Review of Books, and Le Monde diplomatique, among other publications. In 2017 he completed his doctorate in international history at Columbia University. His dissertation, “The American Hour,” surveyed the thinking of two generations of American policy elites and social scientists responding to the phenomenon of decolonization.

Meaney’s current project is a study of the 2015 European political crisis over migration and its aftermath. The account provides a history of high politics vis-à-vis the migration question: how it has been understood, contested, and transformed by European states and partner regimes. He has traveled extensively for the project – from Niger to Libya. He intends to write up the last part of the reporting during his time at the institute, where he will examine the most promising intellectual/political responses to migration, and fresh ways of thinking about its future.