Nausheen Anwar
Professor City & Regional Planning
Director, Karachi Urban Lab (KUL)
Presently the Founder and Director of the Karachi Urban Lab (KUL) and Professor City & Regional Planning in the Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts (SSLA), IBA, Dr. Nausheen Anwar has received her PhD in Urban Planning from Columbia University and a master's in international Affairs also from Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of critical urban studies, human geography, political anthropology, and political economy.
Dr Erum Sattar
Faculty - Tufts University
Presently the Founder and Director of the Karachi Urban Lab (KUL) and Professor City & Regional Planning in the Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts (SSLA), IBA, Dr. Nausheen Anwar has received her PhD in Urban Planning from Columbia University and a master's in international Affairs also from Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of critical urban studies, human geography, political anthropology, and political economy.
Shahid Khan
Indus Earth Trust
Fatima Yameen
Disaster/Climate Vulnerability & Development Expert
Shahana Rajani
Artist, curator and educator, Indus Valley School of Arts and Architecture
Shahana Rajani is an artist and curator based in Karachi. Her recent work focuses on tracing the erasures and violence inherent in urban processes of development and displacement. Using interdisciplinary methods and media, her practice explores the spatial politics of the city’s exclusionary geographies. She is a co-founder of the Karachi Art Anti-University and currently teaches at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and Karachi University.
Saba Khan
Assistant Professor, Department of Fine Arts, NCA
Zahra Malkani
Artist, Assistant Professor - Habib University
Zahra Malkani is an artist and a lecturer in Communication and Design at Habib University. Her research-based art practice spans multiple media and explores the politics of development and infrastructure in the city. She has previously taught at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and is a co-founder of the Karachi LaJamia, an experimental pedagogical project seeking to politicise art education and explore new radical pedagogies and art practices. Exploring and reflecting collaboratively upon the processes and politics of art and research is central to her practice. Zahra has exhibited her work across Pakistan and internationally.
Maneesha Deckha
Faculty of Law University Of Victoria
Professor Deckha graduated with her BA (Joint Honours in Anthropology and Political Science, minor in Women’s Studies) from McGill University in 1995 and her LLB from the University of Toronto in 1998. She joined the Faculty of Law as an Assistant Professor in 2002, after practising at the Ministry of the Attorney General in Toronto and completing her LLM at Columbia University. She is currently Professor and Lansdowne Chair at the Faculty of Law at the University of Victoria where she also directs the Animals & Society Research Initiative.
Professor Deckha’s research interests include animal legal studies and critical animal studies, feminist animal care theory and feminist analysis of law, socio-legal studies in general and reproductive and end-of-life ethics. She has published in law journals in Canada, the USA, and the UK as well as leading academic journals in other disciplines including American Quarterly, Hypatia, and Sexualities. Professor Deckha has also contributed to numerous anthologies relating to animal law, animal studies, feminism, cultural pluralism and health law and policy. Her scholarship has been featured in non-academic spaces as well such as at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and on CBC Radio 1.
Professor Deckha is the recipient of grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and the Canada-U.S. Fulbright Program. She has delivered over one hundred papers in Canada and abroad and has served as referee for over 70 law review, socio-legal, and feminist journals in Australia, Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom. Professor Deckha has also served as reviewer and on review committees in other capacities for national research grant bodies.
She has taught an array of critical theory and public law courses, including Animals, Culture and the Law and Administrative Law. She has been the recipient of the Faculty’s Terry J. Wuester Teaching Award and a University of Victoria Learning and Teaching Centre Grant in support of her interactive pedagogy. Professor Deckha’s seminar on Animals, Culture and the Law received the U.S. Humane Society's Animal and Society New Course Award when it was first offered. She supervises graduate students in the fields of animal legal studies and critical animal studies, health law, reproductive ethics, feminist analysis of law, and postcolonial and critical race theory. She invites prospective graduate students who wish to conduct theory-rich dissertations with high scholarly impact in these areas or at the intersections of socio-legal theory and public law in general to contact her.
Professor Deckha was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008 and Full Professor in 2016. From 2009 to 2011, she served as the Chair of the University of Victoria’s Academic Women Caucus. In 2017, Professor Deckha co-founded the community-engaged Animals & Society Research Initiative at the University of Victoria. In addition to her appointment at the University of Victoria, she has held the Fulbright Visiting Chair in Law and Society at New York University, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Hastings Institute for Bioethics. She is currently a Global Affiliated Faculty member, Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative, Emory Law School in Atlanta as well as a fellow with the Brooks Animal Studies Academic Network at the Brooks Institute for Animal Rights Law & Policy.
Aqdas Fatima
Anthropologist, Research Associate, KUL
Aqdas Fatima has recently graduated from the University of Kent with a bachelor's degree in Social and Biological Anthropology. She has a keen interest in understanding the social and structural dimensions of urban spaces, particularly through visual research. At KUL, she is researching the relationship between heat, cooling, and urban spaces.
Atoofa Samo
M.Phil in Anthropology Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad.
Atoofa has an M.Phil in Anthropology from Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. At KUL, She looks at how lower-income groups take measures in informal ways to accommodate and react to extreme heat; what are the available resources, practices and indigenous knowledge through which people satisfy their necessities for cooling.
Soha Macktoom
Architect and Graduated NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi
I am an architect and graduated from NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi. At KUL, I am looking at state policies and practices to evict low-income communities in specific neighborhoods of Karachi, and the loss of identity of seemingly similar dwellings that are perceived as mere shelters instead of homes.
Muhammed Toheed
M.Phil. in Urban & Regional Planning NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi
Muhammed Toheed received his M.Phil. in Urban & Regional Planning from NED University of Engineering & Technology, Karachi. At KUL, he provides support in the interpretation of data concerning densification, changes in land tenure, land use, and on related issues of displacement and compensation in urban and rural Sindh.
Adam Abdullah
PhD in City and Regional Planning at the Middle East Technical University, Turkey
He is currently pursuing a PhD in City and Regional Planning at the Middle East Technical University, Turkey. At KUL, he is investigating urbanization trends through land deals and land use changes, including the socio-economic trajectories of residents and communities, focusing on Karachi’s periphery.
Jawad Sharif
An award-winning Pakistani filmmaker, cinematographer
Jawad Sharif is an award-winning Pakistani filmmaker, cinematographer, and producer, who believes in using his skill as medium to inspire social change. His work seeks light in the darkest corners of the society and touch's themes that invoke empathy and compassion.
He has worked on several socially and culturally sensitive film projects involving the themes of human rights and social injustice besides arts and culture. He has also directed telefilms, TV series, as well as several TV commercials. His feature films, “Indus Blues” and “K2 & The Invisible Footmen”, has won notable awards in several international film.
Jawad Sharif
Jawad Sharif is an award-winning Pakistani filmmaker, cinematographer, and producer, who believes in using his skill as medium to inspire social change. His work seeks light in the darkest corners of the society and touch's themes that invoke empathy and compassion.
He has worked on several socially and culturally sensitive film projects involving the themes of human rights and social injustice besides arts and culture. He has also directed telefilms, TV series, as well as several TV commercials. His feature films, “Indus Blues” and “K2 & The Invisible Footmen”, has won notable awards in several international film.
Saeed Baloch
Civil society activist and the Secretary General of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF)
Saeed Baloch is a prominent civil society activist and the Secretary General of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), a non-governmental organisation based in Karachi, which works to advance the social, economic, cultural and political rights of fishermen and indigenous fishing communities in Pakistan. He is also an employee of the Fishermen Cooperative Society (FCS)'s labour union.
https://www.frontlinedefenders.org/en/case/case-history-saeed-baloch
Ms. Fatima Majeed
https://pff.org.pk/governming-body/
Ghulam Mustafa Mirani
Chairperson
https://pff.org.pk/governming-body/
Abira Ashfaq
Visiting Faculty (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi
https://www.iba.edu.pk/faculty-profile.php?ftype=Visiting&id=aashfaq
Tahir Rasheed
Director Wildlife at WWF - Pakistan
Hamera Ayesha
Manager Conservation at WWF - Pakistan