Steven Serels is a Research Fellow at the Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient at Martin Luther Universität Halle-Wittenberg, Germany, and as Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Steven is an economic and environmental historian whose research focuses on the causes and consequences of structural poverty in the Southern Red Sea Region (SRSR). He has written three research papers for RVI: Epidemics in the African Red Sea Region: A history of uneven disease exposure (Oct 2020); Unequal Adaptations: A history of environmental change in the Sudan-Eritrea-Ethiopia border region (August 2021); Purchasing Insecurity: The African Red Sea region and the global food trade (October 2022).