Anthropologist, Writer, Artist

How are systemic oppression and structural conditions produced, reproduced, and resisted through spatial and material forms?

How do our social relationships emerge from the built environment—and from the rubble it leaves behind?

My Stories

These questions are not abstract to me; they are grounded in my own lived history. Growing up in a ghetto colony in the old city of Dhaka, as the daughter of a single mother in a lower-middle-class family, and as a member of the Hindu minority in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, I became acutely aware of the intersecting forms of inequality that shape lives.

Anthropology gave me the language and tools to see these intersections spatially—how disparities are embedded in the very structures and geographies that surround us.

To deepen this understanding, I pursued an MA in Women’s and Gender Studies at Loyola University Chicago with a Fulbright Scholarship, where I learned to see how spatial strategies are also gendered. Empowered by this perspective, I went on to complete my PhD in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, my doctoral research brought together anthropology, urban studies, and human geography to explore how spatial transformation and the material remains of place shape both the city and the everyday lives of its inhabitants in Ramu, Bangladesh. Building on this foundation, my current research examines “infrastructure deserts” in the United States—low-income neighborhoods where the absence of critical infrastructure reshapes daily well-being and redefines what it means to inhabit spaces marked by scarcity.

Across my research and teaching, I focus on how individuals and communities engage with the spaces they inhabit, negotiating vulnerability, resilience, and belonging. Over the years, I have had the privilege of collaborating across disciplines, employing creative approaches to spatial analysis. I continue to seek innovative ways to integrate ethnographic methods with participatory GIS mapping, transect walks, mobile ethnography, and architectural analysis to capture the layered dimensions of place.

Beyond the academy, I live as a writer and artist. Through brush, lens, and story, I treat art as both an ethnographic method and a vessel of knowledge. Creative expression allows me not only to document lived realities but also to open new pathways into how people experience, imagine, and transform their worlds.