PhD 2017 (history) University of Pennsylvania
AM 2009 (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies) Columbia University

RESEARCH INTERESTS

African history; Middle Eastern history; imperialism; global nineteenth century; history of death; African diaspora; race and slavery; visual and material culture

BIOGRAPHY

Dr. K.J. Hickerson (she/her) is cultural and political historian of the nineteenth and early twentieth century Nile Valley. Her research stands at the nexus between African history, the study of the African diaspora in the Middle East, and the study of imperialism. Dr. Hickerson’s book manuscript-in-progress, Mortal Struggles: Death and Empire in the Nile Valley, examines cultural practices surrounding death in Sudan throughout the era of Ottoman-Egyptian colonialism, the independent state known as the Mahdiyya, and the early years of the co-dominion of Sudan by Egypt and Great Britain. Her other research and writings address the politics of photography, art, fashion, and medicine in the Nile Valley and beyond.

Before coming to UChicago, Dr. Hickerson was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania. She was the Sir William Luce Fellow at Durham University and has received fellowships and grants from the Huntington Library, the Boston Athenæum, the British Academy, the African Studies Association, among others and her writings have appeared in Durham Middle East Papers, Journal of Northeast African Studies; Encyclopaedia of Islam, 3rd edition; and the Sudan Studies Bulletin.