Photo taken inside a dense apartment complex in North Karachi.
I study how social identities shape and are shaped by political life.
How does the answer to “who am I?” condition the answer to “who should I vote for?” And why do some people answer “who am I?” with their social identities, while others do not? My research addresses both questions in diverse and diversifying societies, with a focus on ethnicity, migration, social class, and (more recently) gender.
I am especially interested in how conflict between groups affects accountability within groups. I examine this in my book manuscript, Dignity and Impunity, which looks at the puzzlingly long tenure of a corrupt and poorly governing ethnic party in Karachi, Pakistan, one of the world’s largest megacities and a city of migrants. The book leverages across- and within-group variation in ethnic mobilization to understand the origins and costs of a politics of recognition — a politics concerned not only with material resources but also with symbolic ones. The manuscript is based on my dissertation, which won the American Political Science Association Urban Politics Section Best Dissertation Award, as well as the Democracy & Autocracy Section Best Fieldwork Award.
While I take a special interest in my home country of Pakistan, my research agenda is global in nature. In addition to my work on Pakistani politics, I have completed or ongoing projects based on original data collected from India, the United Kingdom, Egypt, Lebanon, France, Northern Ireland and the United States.
My work has received generous support from the National Science Foundation, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, the Russell Sage Foundation, the International Growth Centre, Innovations for Poverty Action, and several centers at Stanford and Harvard University. I am an Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University.