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Food is Where all my Interests Meet – 5in10 with Omri Polatsek

Omri Polatsek is a historian of science, technology, and the environment, with a regional focus on Egypt and the Middle East. He is a doctoral student at the International Max Planck Research School “Knowledge and Its Resources: Historical Reciprocities” at the Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte and a researcher at the “History of Technology” Department at the Technische Universität Berlin. Before joining EUME, Omri was an affiliated researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient. He holds an MA in Global History from Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and a BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science from Tel Aviv University.

A person wearing blue gloves is holding a poster with Arabic text and an image of wheat.
Omri Polatsek, Archivo Nacional de Chile, 2026. Photo: Private.

1. How would you explain your research to someone who is not an expert?

I study the transformation of food systems in the 19th and 20th centuries, with a focus on chemical fertilizers in Egypt and the Middle East. Because fertilizers emerged as an important technology in modern history, they can tell us a lot about how our food system, with its contradictions and inequalities, developed over time. Our diet is highly globalized, financialized, heavily based on wheat, rice, sugar, and meat, and reliant on fossil fuels. It is also massively dependent on so-called agrochemicals, such as chemical fertilizers. Chemical fertilizer is an agricultural technology that provides plants with “food” in the form of mineral nutrients so they can feed us. Since they are widely used to grow the main global staples and feed animals, chemical fertilizers have a significant effect on food security and prices. The recent war in the Middle East has pushed fertilizer back into the headlines: The Gulf region provides the world with almost a third of its nitrogen fertilizers. At the same time, it is widely accepted among scientists and activists that chemical fertilizers have destabilizing effects on human health, ecological systems, and the planetary boundaries. In this sense, chemical fertilizers illustrate the contradictory nature of our contemporary food system: On the one hand, our industrial diet and the role of fertilizers within it are tied to economic stability and national sovereignty. And on the other hand, they significantly contribute to our climatic and ecological crises. I would argue that it is the historian’s task to ask ‒ how did we get here?

To answer this question, I study Egypt’s history from the 1880s to the 1950s and examine both the changing role of fertilizer in the country and the transformation of global food systems during that period. Egypt is a very interesting case study because, unlike most countries outside Western Europe and North America, its large use of chemical fertilizer dates to the early 20th century. By focusing on the history of fertilizers amid the transformations of the global food economy, I seek to understand how they became so dependent on and entangled with one another. Basically, I want to understand how contemporary Egypt, and our planetary agro-food systems as an extension, have become deeply dependent on agrochemicals over the last 150 years.

2. What intrigued you when you started your academic journey?

I’m intrigued by the power of the stories we tell about ourselves and the world around us. During my bachelor’s and master’s, I became interested in the history of the environment and infrastructure. During my doctoral studies, I have developed a further interest in science and technology studies and the history of knowledge. Food is where all my interests meet, especially when one considers the hidden life behind our everyday interactions with it as individuals and as societies. History offers tools to examine how food gets to our plates today and how it has changed over time by exposing the different actors and processes involved in producing food and circulating it globally. It can also critically analyze the contradictions and inequalities that define the system today. When we understand that the way things are now has not always been this way, our present might take on a new meaning that opens new possibilities for future pathways for individuals and societies.

3. What were formative encounters or challenges?

It seems to me that over the last 30 years ‒ first with the rise of the internet and the prevalence and availability of digital tools and now with generative artificial intelligence ‒ the humanities have changed in meaningful ways. In the past, historians might have set themselves up in one archive to write their book; nowadays it is more common to visit several archives, in addition to using online archives and other digitized data sources. This has made historical research challenging in a new way. The massive amount of data now available online and the popularity of digital tools have expanded the range of sources that can be collected and used for research. At the same time, however, the sheer volume of information requires to develop new techniques to determine what is truly important and what is just background noise. For example, the fact that I return from field trips with thousands of scanned pages is a mixed blessing: I want to collect everything and make sure I am not missing anything, but I also know that I need to be diligent about finishing my dissertation on time and that I do not really have the time and capacity to go over all of these documents. I guess as a historian, you learn to live with this type of “fomo”.

4. What do you consider to be the role of the humanities and social sciences in times of upheaval, fragmented publics, and authoritarian transgressions?

The global crises of recent years and the rise of algorithmically-driven, financially-oriented social media highlight a frustrating dynamic: on the one hand, the way we perceive the past plays a fundamental role in how we act in the present and plan for the future. On the other hand, the humanities and social sciences play a diminishing role in public life, whilst overly simplistic narratives about the past and present continue to shape our future trajectory. It is well known that the working tools of the humanities and social sciences ‒ critical thinking, evidence-based arguments, engaging storytelling, and the ability to consider various perspectives ‒ are especially crucial in the current moment. The question is, then, how do we use these tools not only to complicate and problematize narratives but to participate actively in social and ecological transformations?

5. What book, article, film, exhibition or song would you recommend, and why?

I recommend Chris Otter’s book “Diet for a Large Planet: Industrial Britain, Food Systems, and World Ecology,” published in 2023. In the book, Otter tells the story of how our Western diet, based on wheat, meat, and sugar, emerged in the 19th and early 20th centuries, intertwining the histories of the earth and human bodies to a compelling narrative about the major food transformations that took place in the last 150 years. It is not only a fun and engaging read, but it also made a deep impression on how I perceive the present: this history, its present meanings, and its different future trajectories are there on my plate!


Citation: Food is Where all my Interests Meet – 5in10 with Omri Polatsek, in: TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research, 09.04.2026, https://trafo-hypotheses.org/65017


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Forum Transregionale Studien (April 9, 2026). Food is Where all my Interests Meet – 5in10 with Omri Polatsek. TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research. Retrieved May 11, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/161ec


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