Hind Ahmed Zaki

Assistant Professor

Political Science and Literatures, Cultures, and Languages

Hind Ahmed Zaki is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, with a joint appointment in the department of Language, Culture, and Literature. She is specialist in comparative politics with a special emphasis in gender and politics and the Middle East and North Africa. Her research examines the role of political violence and its effects on the reproduction of state power and authority with an emphasis on gendered violence. Her first book Gendering Sovereignty: Feminist Politics, Affect, and Violence in Egypt and Tunisia (forthcoming from the University of Pennsylvania Press, 2027) examines the place of state-sponsored feminism in post-revolutionary Egypt and Tunisia to demonstrate how political contestations around gender contributed to the reconfiguration of state domestic sovereignty in the years following the Arab uprisings. Focusing on the gendered dimensions of sovereignty as expressed in policies, laws, public discourses, and episodes of state sanctioned gendered violence, the book theorizes about   both state formation and feminist politics in Egypt and Tunisia, focusing on the role of affect in the making of organized state-sanctioned violence including gendered violence. It shows how the cultivation of affective attachments, that included paternalistic attachments to the state, shaped not just feminist politics but national politics at large.  These effects, which are constantly performed and reiterated, enable states to retain their power over public imaginings and spaces thus reinforcing normative understandings and practices of gender domination in both the public and private spheres.

Her current research projects examine the politics of the veil in MENA region, and how Muslim women’s every day’s experiences with veiling and unveiling shapes the social and political landscape in the region. Focusing on Egypt, Tunisia, and Turkey, Ahmed Zaki’s recent project looks at how Muslim women contest multiple patriarchal spheres and spaces, including the family, the state, and non-state actors as they redefine and contest notions of agency, piety, and respectability in the Middle East. Dr. Ahmed Zaki’s scholarly research was published and is forthcoming in Politics and Gender, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies (JMEWS), International Feminist Journal of Politics, Egypte/Monde Arabe, and Rowaq Arabi, among others. Her public-facing scholarship has appeared in the Washington Post, Mada Masr, and Progressive International.