Joshua Ulysses Thew is completing his PhD at the Department of International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute under the supervision of professor Davide Rodogno. His research focuses on how American attitudes and ideas about race, ethnicity, and religion influenced and determined rural education and development practices in the Middle East, in the 20th century. His broader research interests reside in the fields of community organisation, agriculture – and particularly agrarian outreach – health, and recreation as vehicles for knowledge exchange. Joshua will later join the Department of International History and Politics at the Geneva Graduate Institute as post doctoral researcher.  

What is your research focused on?

My research looks at American ideas of education and the actors that carried these ideas abroad during the 20th century. Recent reflection on my research’s evolution has exposed its personal nature, paralleling my own trajectory in many ways. I grew up in the rural US South, surrounded by farm lands, a national forest, and a manmade lake. In secondary school, boys primarily studied agriculture and shop keeping while girls studied home economics in preparation for a "good" rural life. Those socio-economically advantaged and with good report cards went on to study in America’s land grant college system. Others, like myself, chose national service, which took me abroad at the start of the 21st century before deciding to return to my studies. My own rural education arch is not unusual, and the various pathways others have travelled fascinate me. My own research is closely aligned with exploring how American ideas, institutions, and actors offered similar ladders up for other rural "folk" from the US to the Near East.

My research on the Near East follows the breakup of the Ottoman Empire, looking at institutions and actors that operated in the Balkans, the Levant, and Iran from 1930–1979. Many of the actors began as American missionaries, transitioning to philanthropy in health and education as 20th century “gospels of wealth” for the world. Incidentally, many of these actors were wealthy American industrialists concerned with taking on proactive roles in an era of unofficial US foreign policy. As was the case in the rural US, philanthropic education in the Near East worked similarly to help establish public-private ecosystems in Greece, Lebanon, and Iran, extending access and ideas of education to many whom it was previously inaccessible. For many "peasants", this meant an education to better integrate into an imagined “country life”, but for a selected few, the way up led to doctorate degrees, work in international organisations, and life beyond the rural. Regardless of the various individual outcomes in the American empire of education, the underlying goal temporarily succeeded in socio-economically coupling the rural Near East to the US, which I critique.
The socio-economic concerns of these American philanthropists pushed an education model to address their concerns for urbanisation, secularisation, modernization, and, increasingly, development. The research also encounters philanthropy’s less advocated goals. The Bolshevic revolution left "business[es] of benevolence" fearful of "godless" economic and political alternatives, which then drove urgency in assisting the finalisation and homogenization of the Ottoman empire’s fragmentation. Proceeding West to East, from Greece to Iran, the education actors’ work paralleled that of the authoritarian right-wing governments they worked with. Their shared concerns for perpetuity increased securitization as a concern of the "Free World" during the Cold War. The evolution of US foreign policy during the Cold War helped to ensure the continuation of these educational ideas, actors, and governments as partial architects of the landscape making up an American educational empire. 
Indeed, I am enchanted by the trails, pathways, tracks, and roads we all follow from any part of the world’s countryside to access knowledge. Actually, come to think of it, I am not sure if I have guided my own research so much as life has guided it for me.

What brought you to the Department of International History and Politics at the Graduate Institute? 

After finishing my masters degree in the International History and Politics Department in 2013, I returned to the US and taught history at a large secondary school close to home in Arkansas. I loved teaching, yet I still had an unfulfilled desire to research more, so three years later I returned to that unfulfilled goal. I chose to return to the department of History and Politics because it was already a familiar community with the connections maintained in Geneva. It also helps that I continue to find familiarity between Switzerland and my home once one step outside of the city. The villages, farms, and the mountains create a special quaintness that makes it a “home away from home.”

What are your plans for after having completed your PhD?  

After completing the PhD, I would like to return to teaching more. A classroom environment is a necessity, but its location, the age of the students, and the form of teaching are questions that will depend on opportunities available. I value the mostly technical education I received until graduate school and would like to give some inspiration back to that field if possible. With experience already in the US study abroad program, I am also driven to continue working to expose American youth to world views beyond the US frontier. Last but not least, I also want to publish some of my research since I have mostly avoided this process throughout my PhD.