I am an assistant professor at Williams College, where I study and teach the history of modern Eurasia and the Middle East.

Previously, I was a Mellon postdoctoral fellow at the Harriman Institute and a lecturer in Columbia University’s Department of History. In summer 2023, I earned my Ph.D. from Princeton University.

My dissertation (now first book project), Black Sea, Cold War, explores the entanglement of geopolitics, science, and environment in the greater Black Sea region from 1930 to the present. I am also working on a desert history of Central Asia and a digital humanities analysis of some 1,300 Soviet conservation posters.

Prior to Princeton, I studied at the University of Washington as a Gordon C. Culp Fellow, interned at the US Embassy to Uzbekistan, and taught English in Turkey as a Fulbright grantee. I am from Las Vegas, Nevada.

Email: tcz2@williams.edu

(Unless otherwise stated, all photography is my own)