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Zoha Waseem
Nonresident Scholar, South Asia Program

about


Zoha Waseem is a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie South Asia Program. She is also an assistant professor at the department of sociology, University of Warwick. She is a co-coordinator of the international platform, the Urban Violence Research Network and Associate Editor of Critical Studies on Security. She holds a PhD in security studies from King’s College London, UK.

Waseem conducts interdisciplinary research on policing, state violence, crime and politics, and counterinsurgency with a focus on Pakistan and South Asia. She is broadly interested in the intersections of law and violence, the politics of policing and insecurity, the pluralisation of security provision, militarisation, migration, and informality in the urban global South. She employs ethnographic and qualitative methods in her research, drawing conceptually upon postcolonial, critical, and southern perspectives upon security, policing, and criminal justice.

She is the author of the book Insecure Guardians: Enforcement, Encounters, and Everyday Policing in Postcolonial Karachi (Hurst/Oxford University Press, 2022) which ethnographically explores the development of police institutional culture in postcolonial contexts, with a focus on urban Pakistan. She is also co-editor of the volume, Southern and Postcolonial Perspectives on Policing, Security, and Social Order (Bristol University Press, 2023). Her scholarship has been published in the Journal of Urban Affairs, Policing and Society, Political and Legal Anthropology Review (PoLAR), and the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.


affiliations
areas of expertise
education
PhD, King’s College London

All work from Zoha Waseem

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4 Results
Pakistani police with riot shields advance toward protesters behind a makeshift barricade. One protester stands outside the barricade with arm upraised.
article
Inside the Punitive State: Governance Through Punishment in Pakistan

Mainstream Pakistani political parties are complicit in the criminalization of political activity.

· June 20, 2024
podcast
Pakistan's Political Earthquake

A tumultuous election cycle has just concluded in Pakistan, with surprising results and concerning allegations of vote rigging. Zoha Waseem joins the show to dissect the innerworkings of this election.

· February 13, 2024
event
Unpacking the Politics of Opposition in South Asia
February 28, 2023

While voters across South Asia were once optimistic about the future of democracy, recent political setbacks in the region have dampened these hopes. However, most accounts of democratic backsliding focus on the strategies and tactics of regime incumbents, leaving little room for close study of opposition forces.

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article
A House Divided: Karachi’s Politics Remain in Flux

The 2013 Karachi Operation has engendered lasting instability in Pakistan’s largest city. Religious, military, and political groups vie for power over a multiethnic and divided populace as the threat of violence lingers.

· May 3, 2022