Natalie Koch

• 2024 Fall
  • GEO 372 Political Geography
  • GEO 400 Selected Topics - Authoritarianism
• 2024 Summer
  • GEO 700 Selected Topics - Authoritarianism Today
• 2023 Fall
  • GEO 672 Geopolitics and the State
  • GEO 372 Political Geography

Geography undergraduate advising emails must be sent to: geoundergraddirector@syr.edu

I am a political geographer focusing on geopolitics, the state system, nationalism and identity politics, and environmental politics. My research investigates how authoritarian regimes and power relations are reproduced through sites of pleasure and opportunity, rather than just violence and oppression. Empirically, I focus on the Arabian Peninsula, where I study the many transnational ties that bind the Gulf countries, actors and ideas to other parts of the world.

• Books
  • The Wiley Blackwell companion to political geography (Second edition). Mamadouh, V., Koch, N., Wang, C. and Agnew, J. (eds.) Wiley Blackwell, 2025.
  • Koch, N., Arid empire: The entangled fates of Arizona and Arabia. Verso, 2022.
  • Koch, N., Spatializing authoritarianism. Syracuse University Press, 2022.
  • Handbook on the changing geographies of the state: New spaces of geopolitics. Moisio, S., Koch, N., Jonas, A., Lizotte, C. and Luukkonen, J. (eds.) Edward Elgar, 2020.
  • Koch, N., The geopolitics of spectacle: Space, synecdoche, and the new capitals of Asia. Cornell University Press, 2018.
  • Koch, N., Critical geographies of sport: Space, power, and sport in global perspective. Routledge, 2017.
• Journal Articles
  • Koch, N., "The symbolic power of sustainability: Gulf megaprojects and the case of Expo City Dubai." Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 2025.
  • Koch, N., "Green nationalism from above: Authoritarian state power and the greening of UAE nationalism." Nations and Nationalism, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Sustainability spectacle in the Gulf." Current History, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Cultural diplomacy at second-tier global events: The case of Qatar’s 2023 Horticultural Expo." GeoJournal, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Scientific nationalism and museums of the future in Germany and the UAE." Political Geography, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Desert solar—A spectacular fiction, not a spectacular future." MERIP Middle East Report, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Seeking surprise in political geography." In Review forum: Reading Natalie Koch’s, Arid empire: The entangled fates of Arizona and Arabia. Political Geography, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Teaching geopolitics through sport." Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Free speech or obedient speech? Revisiting liberal speech norms in ‘closed contexts’." Area, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "Event ethnography: Studying power and politics through events." Geography Compass, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "Geographies of nationalism." Human Geography, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "Sustainability spectacle and “post-oil” greening initiatives." Environmental Politics, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "The problem with rallying around the (Ukrainian) flag." Space and Polity, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "Revisiting “For ethnography in political geography”." Political Geography, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "Gulf hydrogen horizons: Why are Gulf oil and gas producers so keen on hydrogen?." IASS Discussion Paper, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Sports sponsorship and Gulf geopolitics." Orient, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "The state fetish: Producing the territorial state system at a World's Fair." FOCUS on Geography, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Greening oil money: The geopolitics of energy finance going green." Energy Research & Social Science, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Planting flags in water." Dialogues in Human Geography, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Wastelanding Arabia: America's 'Garden of Eden' in Al Kharj, Saudi Arabia." Journal of Historical Geography, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Authoritarian space-time." Political Geography, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Desert geopolitics: Arizona, Arabia, and an arid-lands response to the territorial trap." Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 2021.
  • Koch, N., "Whose apocalypse? Biosphere 2 and the spectacle of settler science in the desert." Geoforum, 2021.
  • Koch, N., "The desert as laboratory: Science, state‐making, and empire in the drylands." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2021.
  • Koch, N., "Food as a weapon? The geopolitics of food and the Qatar-Gulf rift." Security Dialogue, 2021.
  • Koch, N., Tynkkynen, V., "The geopolitics of renewables in Kazakhstan and Russia." Geopolitics, 2021.
  • Koch, N., "The Political Lives of Deserts." Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 2021.
  • Koch, N., Vora, N., "Islamophobia and the uneven legal geographies of the ethnonationalism." Political Geography, 2020.
  • Koch, N., "The geopolitics of Gulf sport sponsorship." Sports, Ethics & Philosophy, 2020.
  • Koch, N., "The corporate production of nationalism." Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography, 2020.
  • Koch, N., "Deep listening: Practicing intellectual humility in geographic fieldwork." Geographical Review, 2020.
• Book Chapters
  • Mamadouh, V., Koch, N., Woon, C. and Agnew, J., "Introduction." In V. Mamadouh, N. Koch, C-Y. Wang, J. Agnew (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to political geography (Second edition). Wiley Blackwell, 2025.
  • Painter, J., Koch, N., "Power." In V. Mamadouh, N. Koch, C-Y. Wang, J. Agnew (eds.), The Wiley Blackwell companion to political geography (Second edition). Wiley Blackwell, 2025.
  • Koch, N., "When Yugoslavia was the Wild West." In T. Beasley-Murray, W. Bracewell, and M. Murawski (eds.), Anti-Atlas: Critical Area Studies from the East of the West. UCL Press, 2025.
  • Koch, N., "Geographies of authoritarian politics." In A. Wolf (ed.), Oxford handbook of authoritarian politics. Oxford University Press, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Solar power’s water problem in the Arabian Peninsula." In M. Haghirian and M. Fantappiè (eds.), Avenues for Regional Energy Cooperation in the Gulf. Istituto Affari Internazionali, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Authoritarian regimes and the environment." In N. Lindstaedt and J. Van den Bosch (eds.), Research handbook on authoritarianism. Edward Elgar, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Milk nationalism: Branding dairy and the state in the Arabian Peninsula." In S. Wippel (ed.), Branding the Middle East: Communication strategies and image building from Qom to Casablanca. De Gruyter, 2023.
  • Koch, N., ""On the cult of personality and its consequences": American nationalism and the Trump cult." In N. Koch (ed.), Spatializing authoritarianism. Syracuse University Press, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Urban life in Central Asia." In D. Montgomery (ed.), Central Asia: Contexts for understanding. University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "The political geography of economic nationalism." In A. Pickel (ed.), Handbook of Economic Nationalism. Edward Elgar, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Sporting Cities and Economic Diversification in the Arabian Peninsula." In P.M. Brannagan and D. Reiche (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Sport in the Middle East. Routledge, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Environmental geopolitics in Central Asia." In J. Van den Bosch, A. Fauve, & B. De Cordier (eds.), European handbook of Central Asian studies: History, politics and societies. ibidem, 2021.
  • Laszczkowski, M., Koch, N., "Rethinking spectacular cities: Beyond authoritarianism and mastermind schemes." In E. Marat & R. Isaacs (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Central Asia. Routledge, 2021.
  • Koch, N., "InterAsian Islamisms: Monumental mosques and modernity in Kazakhstan and Qatar." In B. Batuman (ed.), Cities and Islamisms: On the politics and the production of built environment. Routledge, 2020.
  • Koch, N., "Nationalism, Methodological." In International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. Elsevier, 2020.
  • Koch, N., "InterAsian Islamisms." In B. Batuman (ed.), Cities and Islamisms: On the politics and the production of built environment. Routledge, 2020.
  • Moisio, S., Jonas, A., Koch, N., Luukkonen, J. and Lizotte, C., "Changing geographies of the state: Themes, challenges, futures." In S. Moisio, N. Koch, A. Jonas, J. Luukkonen, & C. Lizotte (eds.), Handbook on the changing geographies of the state: New spaces of geopolitics. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.
• Commentaries & Briefs
  • Koch, N., "Central Asia relies on Gulf as it targets energy transition." Bourse & Bazar Foundation Insight Brief, 2025.
  • Koch, N., "Gulf AgTech for investment, not food security." Wilson Center MENA360°, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "No, the Saudis haven’t stopped pumping Arizona groundwater." Arizona Capitol Times, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Gulf sport geopolitics and Western cultural hegemony." AspeniaOnline: International Analysis and Commentary, 2024.
  • Koch, N., "Solar power’s water problem in the Arabian Peninsula." Bourse & Bazar Foundation Insight Brief, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "We can’t engineer our way out of the water crisis in the Southwest US." New Scientist, 2023.
  • Koch, N., "Global sport and Gulf's sovereign wealth funds." AspeniaOnline: International Analysis and Commentary, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "Guest essay: Arizona is in a race to the bottom of its water wells, with Saudi Arabia's help." The New York Times, 2022.
  • Koch, N., "The Gulf's sovereign wealth fund cities." AspeniaOnline: International Analysis and Commentary, 2021.
  • Koch, N., "Trends to watch: Sport geopolitics." The World in 2022, Italian Institute for International Political Studies, 2021.