Scott Thomas Erich is a Doctoral Lecturer at Baruch College, City University of New York. Previously, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Washington College, and the Howell Postdoctoral Research Associate in Arabian Peninsula and Gulf Studies in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia.
Scott is a historical anthropologist and environmental historian who received his PhD from the Graduate Center, CUNY in 2023. His dissertation, about extraction, property and rights at sea off the coast of the Arabian Peninsula was awarded the 2024 Gwen Okhruhlik Dissertation Award. His current book project, Taming the Sea: Environment, Enclosure and Extraction in Southeastern Arabia, is an ethnographic and legal history of how fishermen, local rulers, colonial officials, states, and private companies claim rights to oceanic “territory” and extract marine natural resources – including pearls, fish, sponges, and oil – from the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman.
Scott is a recipient of the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Award and the Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant. Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar at the American University of Sharjah, U.A.E., and a Fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs in Muscat, Oman. He has worked at the University of Chicago, the Middle East Institute, and the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center, and taught as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Baruch College from 2017-2023.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
"Welcome to our Coastal Community:" Field Notes from Abu Dhabi's Maritime Heritage Festival Circuit," in Gulf Educational and Social Policy Review 6, no. 1 (2024)
"Hunters and Aquaculturalists in the Gulf of Oman," in a Theorizing the Contemporary Editor's Forum on "Coastal Futures," Fieldsights, January 25, 2024.
"A deeper history of the 'world's largest dead zone' in the Gulf of Oman," in the International Review of Environmental History 9, no. 1 (2023).
"Fishing in the Shadow of Oil," for SAPIENS, a magazine published by the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Chicago Press. Selected as one of ten articles for "Best of SAPIENS 2023."
REVIEWS & INTERVIEWS
Review of Samantha Muka's Oceans Under Glass: Tank Craft and the Sciences of the Sea for H-Oceans (March 2025).
Review of Gísli Pálsson's Last of Its Kind: The Search for the Great Auk and the Discovery of Extinction for H-Environment (August 2024).
Interview with Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow about A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History for the New Books in the Indian Ocean World podcast.
Review of Edyta Roszko's Fishers, Monks and Cadres in Anthropology Book Forum 10 (January 2024).
Interview with Steve Mentz about An Introduction to the Blue Humanities for the New Books in the Indian Ocean World podcast.
CONTACT
scott.erich [at] baruch.cuny.edu
serich [at] gradcenter.cuny.edu