Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences - Institute of Asian and African Studies

Teaching and Research Portfolio

 

My assignment at the Institute of Asian and African Studies started with the winter term 2018-2019 at the Chair for Transregional Southeast Asian Studies. I completed my postdoctoral thesis work (Habilitation) in Political Science at the University of Cologne, after acquiring a PhD degree at the University of Erfurt and a Master’s Degree (Political Science, International Law and Psychology) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn.

 

From 2011 to 2017 I worked as DAAD Long Term Guest Professor at the National Institute of Pakistan Studies and as visiting lecturer at the School of Politics and International Relations as well as at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, at the National University of Science and Technology (Department of Development Studies) and at the University of Peshawar (Departments of Political Science and International Relations), Pakistan. Prior to that, I held positions as research associate and lecturer at the Institute of Political Science at the Philipps University Marburg, at the Institute of Social Science at the University of Hildesheim, at the Institute of East Asian Studies / Political Science at the University of Duisburg-Essen and as contracted lecturer at the Cologne Centre of Comparative Politics at the University of Cologne. In 2010/11 I served as Acting Professor of Political Science at the University of Hildesheim, in 2007 as HEC Visiting Professor at Punjab University in Lahore, Pakistan, as well as in 2006 at the Universitat Jaume I in Castellon, Spain.

As consultant and academic advisor I have cooperated with German political foundations and civil society organisations through workshops, trainings, consultations and action research projects in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Thailand and Indonesia. My research experiences are transregional in nature – be it in South and Southeast Asia (Afghanistan, Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, Burma/Myanmar, Pakistan), Australia and Europe (Germany, Portugal).

 

 

During the past years of research and teaching, the following clusters crystallised:

  • region-wise anchored in Europe and Asia (in transregional comparative perspective), with particular foci on South and Southeast Asia with a number of research and teaching stints (e.g. in Germany, Portugal and Spain along with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma/Myanmar, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Cambodia)
  • discipline-wise positioned at the interdisciplinary, inter-contextual nexus of Comparative Politics, Development Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies, transition studies, social movement studies, gender studies and political sociology
  • topic-wise evolving around questions of (1) political institution-building, nation-building processes, citizenship and governance processes (with a focus on intervention and transformation contexts); (2) political participation and representation; (3) civil society activisms and social movements; (4) socio-political inequalities and subsequent governance challenges through diverse forms of displacement and migration; along with (5) challenges for (critical) qualitative social sciences and their methodologies generated by multiple hegemonies and colonial legacies in heterogeneous and volatile contexts in the Global South.

 

 

Foki of current research work:


  • InFACt - Introducing Future Academic Collaboration (with Claudia Derichs, Bettina Dennerlein and Sarah Farag)

  • co2libri - Conceptual Collaboration: Living Borderless Research Interaction (with Kai Kresse, Schirin Amir-Moazami, Ulrike Freiag, Nadja-Christina Schneider, Claudia Derichs and Nahed Samour) 

  • Researching in Times of a Pandemic: COVID-19 RM Working Group on Pakistan (with Sarah Holz)

  • Negotiating Research Ethics – An Initiative (with Rosa Cordillera A. Castillo)

  • Imagining the ‘Postcolonial’ Nation at 70 - New Critical Voices of Social Sciences in Pakistan (with Sarah Holz and Arslan Waheed)
  • Women’s Substantive Representation and Questions of Political Patriarchy in Afghanistan and Pakistan (with Farzana Bari)
  • Conflict-induced Displacement in Pakistan’s FATA – ‚Invisible‘ Experiences and Hegemonic Discourses in the Context of Transnational Military Interventions (with Tariq Saeed Yousufzai)
  • Mapping Civil Society in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Between Contestations, Heterogeneities, Shrinking Spaces and Transnational Conflict Dynamics (in particular with regard to women’s movements and gender-specific civil society and governance networks)
  • Debating the Kohistan Video Case ‘Honour Killings’ and Women Protection Bills at the Intersection of Judicial Activism, Legal Pluralism and Rights-based Policy Advocacy Networks (with Farzana Bari)