Henry Misa (PhD Ohio State 2026) is a historian of premodern Central Asia whose
research connects environmental and political history. His first book project explores
the environmental history of Central Asia between the sixth and eleventh centuries
CE, combining paleoclimate and ancient DNA evidence with medieval Arabic,
Persian, Turkic, and Chinese primary sources. Revising the earlier scholarly
consensus about the ecological fragility of nomads, this project argues that
agricultural production and local political contexts played a central role in mediating
relationships between the environment and society.
His broader research agenda encompasses the technological and political history of
the pre-modern Islamicate world, including Persianate metal refining and the
influence of eunuchs and local elites on the political transformations of the tenth
century. His work has been supported by a Fulbright Hays fellowship, and he is
currently a visiting researcher at Georgetown’s Global Medieval Studies Program.
His work has been published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Studies in
Late Antiquity, and Central Asian Survey.