Hengameh (Henny) Ziai

Hengameh (Henny) Ziai is a lecturer in the history of the Middle East and Africa at SOAS, University of London.

Henny Ziai received her BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the Oxford University, masters degrees in African Studies and Middle East Studies from Oxford University and SOAS respectively, and a PhD in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University. Her interests lie at the intersection of political theory, Islamic studies, and critical political economy, with a current focus on histories of capitalism and the emergence of colonial modernity in the Middle East and Africa.

Alongside her research she has digitised, through the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme, a rare nineteenth century commercial archive belonging to the Sudanese merchant, Abdallah Bey Hamza [EAP1284], as well as co-founding and co-convening the Histories of Capitalism and Race seminar series at SOAS.

She is currently completing her book manuscript, tentatively entitled Archives of Insurgency: Islam, Political Economy and the Mahdist Rebellion in Sudan.