Samia Huq

Samia Huq is the Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics and Social Science at BRAC University, Dhaka. She spends half of her time involved with research at BRAC Development Institute. With a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from Brandeis University, USA, Samia has worked on women's Islamic discussion circles in Dhaka, exploring women's involvement with informal religious groups and their engagement and contestation with textual forms of Islamic piet. She was involved in the South Asia Hub of Pathway's of Women's Empowerment RPC (DFID funded Research Program Consortium headquartered at IDS, University of Sussex from 2006-2011). Her on going research includes Islamist women and their engagement with policies relevant to gender and development, and tracing the cultural history of Bengali Muslim women in the 50s and 60s. Samia coordinated BDI's conference on Islam and Politics titled "Transcending Binaries: Islam and Politics in South Asia" in December 2010. Her writings published and forthcoming in international journals and edited books are on Islamic discourses and their application in women’s everyday lives in a "secular" Muslim majority Bangladesh. Her research interests include social movements, especially processes of religious mobilizations in Bangladesh and South Asia and debates around modernity and secularism as they play out in the South Asian context.