Kimberly Katz earned her PhD in history from New York University in 2001 for her dissertation,"Holy Places and National Spaces: Jerusalem under Jordanian Rule." She studies the Middle East and North Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on social history, cultural history; colonial history, post-colonial history, with particular interest in urban history. She is currently working on a project about urban history and heritage in colonial and post-colonial Tunisia.