Sam Harshbarger

I am a freelance writer and researcher based in the UK, and a research assistant at the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. I earned an MPhil in modern European history with distinction from Balliol College, Oxford, and an A.B. in history from Princeton University, where I graduated summa cum laude.

I study the intellectual history of right-wing opponents of empire in the twentieth century. My MPhil dissertation examined the role of Central Asian émigrés in transforming the ideas and tactics of interwar European anti-Soviet agitation into global anti-communism in the 1950s and 1960s. My interest in history has firm roots in the present, and so I also write about contemporary cultural and political developments in Eurasia and the Middle East. When I’m procrastinating on other tasks, I sift through the Cold War records of my great-grandfather, Robert J. Havighurst, and follow politics in the Americas, Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Ukraine.

In the summer of 2024, I worked as an Overseas Press Club Foundation Fellow with The Associated Press in Bangkok, Thailand. My work has been published by the Baku Research Institute, The Daily Princetonian, Kültürkampf, and the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy.

Outside of travel, languages, and reading, I love Brazilian music, Sichuanese food, Guinness, and Wikipedia. I am a fan of Beşiktaş, Chicago Fire, and River Plate. I also like coffee, islands, maps, and mountains.

I was born in Chicago, Ill. and grew up in suburban New Jersey. Chicago, Istanbul, and Princeton, N.J. are home.