Alden Young is an historian and development studies scholar focused on the societies of northeast Africa and the Red Sea region. He is the author of Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development and State-Formation (Cambridge University Press). He is currently an assistant professor of African American Studies and a member of the International Institute at UCLA, where he teaches in the program in International Development Studies. At the Berggruen Institute, Alden will work on efforts to organize the Red Sea region, one of the world’s most socioeconomically unequal, into a political, economic and cultural unit. His work takes up this challenge both historically looking at the work of Sudanese intellectuals and their ambitions for connections across the Red Sea and in the contemporary moment by looking at the work climate change awareness, mitigation and adaptation in litorrial countries of the Red Sea.