Elise Burton

I am a historian of the life sciences in the modern Middle East, focusing on developments in genetics, evolutionary biology, physical anthropology, and archaeology during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. My research examines the historical relationship of these sciences to the formation of racial, ethnic, and national identities, and how these identities, in turn, have affected the dynamics of transnational scientific collaborations.

I am currently working on multiple projects, many of which examine scientific connections between the Middle East and South and East Asia. By investigating a range of scientific research practices, transregional educational networks, and trans-Asian field expeditions, I trace the flow of ideas about biological races and how these produced different notions of Asian identity. These projects examine:

• The history of Japanese archaeological expeditions to Iraq and Iran and Japanese medical research in Iran
• The influence of South Asian and Iranian anthropologists on the science of dermatoglyphics, a form of physical anthropology based on fingerprints and palm lines
• The history of genetic research on Zoroastrian (Parsi) communities in India and Iran

Another major project focuses on Egypt and its role in the history of paleoserology, the precursor to today’s ancient DNA science. Beginning with the first efforts to detect blood in Egyptian mummified tissues in the first years of the 20th century, I trace how contested claims over the origins and identity of Ancient Egyptian civilization shaped the development of physical anthropology and forensic genetic techniques at both national and international scales.

My first book, Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity (Stanford University Press, 2021) draws on archival research across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States using sources in Turkish, Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew. The book shows how Middle Eastern peoples—both as scientific actors and research subjects—played an important role in the history of human genetics. Western scientists frequently sought out data from Middle Eastern populations, especially religious minorities and tribal nomads, to test hypotheses about the origins of continental races and ancient civilizations, or the evolution of inherited diseases like sickle cell anemia and favism. At the same time, Middle Eastern scientists strongly shaped how Western geneticists collected and interpreted data from their countries. Genetic Crossroads has been recognized with awards from the Middle East Studies Association (2021 Nikki Keddie Book Award) and the Independent Publisher Book Awards (2022 Bronze Medal in World History). In 2023, an international selection committee awarded me a Dan David Prize for early-career excellence in historical research. 

For further publication information, please see:  https://utoronto.academia.edu/EliseBurton

Awards

• 2023 Dan David Prize, Dan David Foundation
• 2022 Bronze Medal in World History, Independent Publisher Book Awards
• 2021 Price/Webster Prize, History of Science Society
• 2021 Nikki Keddie Award, Middle East Studies Association

Selected Publications

Genetic Crossroads: The Middle East and the Science of Human Heredity. Stanford University Press, 2021

"Molecular Artifacts: Whiteness and the Genetics of the Ancient Dead." Isis 116, no. 4 (2025): 778-789.

"Facing the Past: Human Skulls, Facial Reconstruction, and National Identity in the Middle East." In Ordering the Human: The Global Spread of Racial Science, pp. 201-226. Columbia University Press, 2024.

"Accidents of geography: Historicizing genetic cartographies of the Middle East." Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 54, no. 1 (2024): 3-41.

"Ashkenazi Anxieties: A Transnational Social History of Jewish Genetic Admixture Modeling, 1971–1986." Journal of the History of Biology 55, no. 3 (2022): 411-442.

With Ageliki Lefkaditou: "Race in Circulation: Blood Banks and Forced Mobilities in the Eastern Mediterranean." Bulletin of the History of Medicine 96, no. 3 (2022): 375-402.

"Comparative globalizations: Building and dismantling genetic laboratories in Lebanon." The British Journal for the History of Science 55, no. 4 (2022): 495-513.

"Rethinking Collaboration: Medical Research and Working Relationships at the Iranian Pasteur Institute." Isis 112, no. 3 (2021), 461-483.

“Red crescents: Race, genetics, and sickle cell disease in the Middle East.” Isis 110, no. 2 (2019), 250-269.

"Narrating ethnicity and diversity in Middle Eastern national genome projects." Social Studies of Science 48, no. 5 (2018), 762-786.

"'Essential collaborators’: Locating Middle Eastern geneticists in the global scientific literature, 1950s-70s.” Comparative Studies in Society and History 60, no. (2018), 119-149.

“Evolution and creationism in Middle Eastern education: a new perspective.” Evolution 65, no. 1 (2011), 301-304.