On Barak is the author of "Powering Empire: How Coal Made the Middle East and Sparked Global Carbonization." He is a senior lecturer at the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University, where he specializes in social and cultural history of science and technology in non-Western settings. Previously, On was a member of the Princeton Society of Fellows and a lecturer at the history department at Princeton University. He is a co-founder and co-editor of the Social History Workshop, a weekly blog published on the Haaretz website analyzing current Middle Eastern affairs through the lens of contemporary historical research.