I am a historian of state-building in the pre-modern Middle East broadly interested in how shifts in political structures were interconnected with the transformation of the elites. More specifically, I am interested in how the experience of being ruled by early modern empires affected the long-term development of Arab states and societies.

My dissertation Between Sultans and Imams: the state and elites in early modern Zaydi Yemen (15th-17th centuries) considered one case of early modern Arab state-building – the Zaydi imamate in Yemen that after a century of direct Ottoman rule became an independent state. At the Polonsky Academy, I am working on a second project, The Gravitational Pull of Empires, that brings a comparative perspective to the core question of my research by juxtaposing the development of Arab societies under Safavid and Ottoman rule.

Ekaterina (Kate) Pukhovaia (0000-0002-0433-6885) (orcid.org)