MEMO speaks with Assistant Professor of History at University of Virginia Chris Gratien to discuss his new book 'The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier', which explores the social and environmental transformation of the Adana region of Southern Turkey during the 19th and 20th centuries. 

Gratien teaches classes on global environmental history and the Middle East and is also co-creator of the Ottoman History Podcast, which since 2011 has featured hundreds of scholars specialising in the history of the Ottoman Empire, the modern Middle East and the Islamic world.