Previous RGF Directors

Amit Prakash, Ph.D.
Visiting Professor of International and Global Studies
Rohatyn Global Fellows Director, Fall 2022 - Spring 2026

Amit Prakash is a historian who focuses on the nexus of imperialism, anti-colonialism, and migration. His research is animated by fundamental questions about state power and identification: How do states justify the use of violence? Why and how are some people produced as insiders or outsiders of a society? These interests led him to study the policing and state control of North African colonial migrants in Paris during the period of decolonization (Empire on the Seine, OUP, 2022). He is currently researching the global influence of French counterinsurgency theory on military and police institutions. At Middlebury, Prof. Prakash teaches classes on policing, borders and identification, and anti-colonialism, and he was an Assistant Director of the First Year Seminar program from 2020 to 2022. Beyond Middlebury, he has been featured in the documentaries The Price of Safety (Spencer, 2021), The Business of War: How the Police Came to Look Like Armies (Al-Jazeera, 2025), and was the cohost of the history and current events podcast No Politics at the Dinner Table. Some of his recent publications include “The Paris Police and Migrants since 1789” in The Routledge Handbook of the History of Paris since 1789 (Routledge, 2025) and “France Has a Deep History of Racist Policing—Even If It Won’t Admit It” (The Nation, 2023).  Forthcoming is a co-edited anthology entitled Critical Approaches to Global Police Power (Bloomsbury Academic) and a review essay on “Dangerous Publics in France” for the journal French Politics, Culture and Society. He holds a B.A. in English from Oberlin College and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University. He has previously taught at Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University.