 Beinin's research and writing focuses on workers, peasants, and minorities in the modern Middle East.Though initially interested in the rise of an Arab Working class in Mandatory Palestine, under his thesis supervisor's advice, he changed the topic of his doctoral thesis to a history of the Egyptian labor movement since 1936.That Ph.D. thesis was combined with one covering an earlier period of Egyptian labor history by his friend and colleague Zachary Lockman and resulted in the publication of "Workers on the Nile