James Tharin Bradford

Dr. James Tharin Bradford, drug historian and Associate Professor of History at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Best known for his 2019 book "Poppies, Politics, and Power: Afghanistan and the Global History of Drugs and Diplomacy" where Bradford shed new light on the neglected but critical element in Afghanistan’s history exploring the surge of opium production as a means to understand how global prohibition today has failed. He has been established as one of the foremost historians of drugs in Afghanistan and South Asia. He has written numerous articles and chapters, most notably for Iranian Studies, The Oxford Handbook of Global Drug History, The War on Drugs: A History, and Cannabis: Global Histories. He has appeared on NPR, English Al Jazeera, and numerous other podcasts, and teaches classes on the history of politics of drugs, crime, and human rights at Berklee.