Katharina Mewes
Profile
Katharina Mewes is research associate and coordinator at the Center for Advanced Study “RomanIslam – Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies”, hosted by the University of Hamburg, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under the direction of Stefan Heidemann, professor for Islamic History at the Department of History and Culture of the Middle East.
She studied political science and Islamic studies from a modern perspective. Her previous research focused on socio-political transformation in the Arab World. Her first book Decentralization of the Urban Water Supply and Sanitation Services in Yemen (2011), links the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological aspects of decentralization to empiric problems, evaluating the reform process of the Yemeni Urban Water Supply and Sanitation (UWSS) sector.
Within the framework of the ERC project “The Early Islamic Empire at Work – The View from the Regions Toward the Center” (2014-2020), of which she has been the coordinator, she has co-edited The Reach of Empire, and is co-publisher of the article “Studying Elites in Early Islamic History” (2020).
Her research interest is in the rise and formation of Islam in Late Antiquity; the nature and function of leadership in Islam; and competing forms of religious and political authority within the early Islamic empire (660-940 CE). She examines processes of Islamication in early Islamic North Africa, exploring how native opposition to Arab rule and internal political dissent, as well as regional topographical aspects influenced the imperial status of the region. In order to understand how the early Islamic empire shaped the formation of socio-political institutions, cities, societies, and landscapes, she aims at reconstructing how imperial rule not only integrated wide regions into the imperial structures, but also played a fundamental role for counter models and concerning narratives.
Research Interests
- Islamic History
- Empire Studies
- Late Antiquity
CV
Selected Publication
Stefan Heidemann & Katharina Mewes, eds., ( forthcoming), The Reach of Empire, The Early Islamic Empire at Work Vol. 2. Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East, 37. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Hannah-Lena Hagemann, Katharina Mewes & Peter Verkinderen (2020), “Studying Elites in Early Islamic History”, in: Hannah-Lena Hagemann & Stefan Heidemann, eds., Transregional and Regional Elites: Connecting the Early Islamic Empire, The Early Islamic Empire at Work Vol. 1, Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East, Berlin: de Gruyter.
