From 2000 to 2010, she held positions at St Antony’s College, Oxford then the University of Edinburgh, where she was appointed Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW). From 2010 to 2022, she was Senior Research Fellow in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. She spends significant time in the field, particularly in Yemen.
Kendall edits the “Essential Middle Eastern Vocabularies” series, for which she also authored three volumes: Diplomacy Arabic, Intelligence Arabic and Media Arabic. Kendall appears frequently in the international television, radio and print media. She has been invited to present her research to governments, military and intelligence audiences all around the world.
She was elected the twentieth Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, from 1 October 2022.
In 2022, Kendall was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Oxford “in recognition of her distinguished academic career as a British Arabist”.
In 2023, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of Glasgow “in recognition of the major contribution made to Arabic Studies”.
A month after Hamas’ brutal attacks on Israel in October 2023 and the eruption of war in Gaza, Yemen’s Houthis began to exercise a chokehold on the Red Sea and to launch increasingly sophisticated missiles at Israel itself. This has resulted in major disruption to both global seaborne trade and Israel’s sense of security, and it has drawn the US, UK and Israel itself into conducting multiple airstrikes on Yemen. The Houthis frame themselves as the heroic defenders of Palestine, but what is really going on? After a decade of civil war in Yemen which the international community barely noticed, despite the Houthis launching over a thousand missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia and striking targets inside the United Arab Emirates, suddenly the world sat up and watched, wondering: who are the Houthis, what do they want, and where might all this lead?
