José Ciro Martínez, 2015–2016 CAORC Pre-Doctoral Fellow
José Ciro Martínez is a pre-doctorate Fellow at ACOR conducting research in Jordan until December 2015. He is completing his Ph.D. in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge.
Before his ACOR-CAORC fellowship, he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship that gave him the opportunity to study and conduct research in Jordan for 14 months. He has also worked, lived and conducted research in Morocco, Argentina, Syria and Lebanon.
José studies the politics of food in the Modern Middle East. His dissertation focuses on subsidized bread. His work employs an array of methods including ethnographic research, which he has pursued while observing and working in 3 different bakeries in Amman. During his stay at ACOR, he hopes to return to his old haunts while expanding the scope of the project to include the role and impact of bakeries and bread subsidies in Ma‘an, Aqaba and Irbid.
After receiving his B.A. magna cum laude in Political Science and History from Williams College, José spent a year on a Thomas J. Watson travel fellowship pursuing a research project examining politics and the printed press in immigrant communities. He then studied at Cambridge as a Herchel Smith fellow during which time he completed two Master’s, one in Politics and a second in Middle Eastern Studies. In 2014, he was awarded the Gates Cambridge Scholarship to pursue doctoral studies.
To learn more about José’s research in Jordan, read the ACOR blogpost “When Bread Is More than Just Bread” which was written by José in February 2016.
– As interviewed by ACOR Intern Blake Cutter, a student at the University of Denver in Amman with the C.I.E.E. study abroad program (fall semester 2015).
