SASC Colloquium Series: Refugee Cities, Sanaa Alimia

Sanaa Alimia will be discussing her manuscript, Refugee Cities: How Afghans Transformed Pakistan (Penn Press 2022). The book spans two major geopolitical conflicts: the Soviet-Afghan War and the War on Terror and urges an examination of international relations from below. It also shows how Afghans in Pakistan, persons who have been displaced for over 40 years, create new homes—in physical and affective terms—in the city. Alimia also hopes the book and the stories within it will raise a broader question for researchers and scholars: what does it mean to conduct research in contexts of violence? And how does this impact not only the researcher and subjects of study, but also the methods used, and concepts under examination.
Sanaa Alimia is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations. She is a recipient of the British Academy/ Leverhulme Small Grants Award for her research project, ‘Digital Borders, Bodies, and Mobility in South Asia’. Alimia’s manuscript, ‘Refugee Cities: How Afghans Transformed Pakistan’ is out in 2022 (University of Pennsylvania Press). Alimia has previously held positions at the Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin (2014-2019), Department of Political Science, University of Peshawar (2013-2017), and SOAS, London (2011-2014).
The event is hybrid, in-person & Zoom. The zoom link is below.