RESEARCH GROUPS
Pakistan Studies Group
Convenors: Steve Lyon (University of Durham) and Kaveri Harriss (University of Sussex)
The Pakistan Studies Group was founded in the mid-1980s to address the frustration of scholars of Pakistan. Pakistan is an extremely heterogeneous country, encompassing aspects of South Asian, Middle Eastern and Central Asian societies. Going to specialist conferences on any of those regions, therefore, meant addressing some, but not all, aspects of the diverse richness of Pakistan. Adding to this complex socio-cultural milieu, Pakistanis constitute important migrant groups around the globe. The agenda of the Pakistan Studies Group has therefore been to focus on the specificities of Pakistani culture and society as well as the complex relationship between Pakistanis and people from other regions.
The Pakistan Studies Group was initially founded to bring together anthropologists and sociologists whose research involved the relatively under-represented fields of Pakistan, the Pakistani diaspora and South Asian Islam. However, it has developed into an international forum attracting scholars and researchers from a range of disciplines including historians, political scientists, economists, geographers, development workers and missionaries. In recent years, literary criticism has become an increasingly strong presence in the Pakistan Studies Group, addressing work on colonial and postcolonial literature in English, Urdu, Punjabi and other regional languages and dialects of Pakistan. Although not a new research group, we wish to be linked to a well-established association such as BASAS to allow mutually-beneficial research bids to the British Academy, and to expand our parameters in the ways outlined below.
The primary activity of the Pakistan Studies Group has always been to provide a relaxed arena in which scholars of Pakistan, the Pakistani diaspora and South Asian Islam might share ideas about ongoing research. The first Pakistan Workshop was held in 1986 in the Lake District, and since then the Workshops have been held annually, attracting scholars from different disciplines around the world, as well as non-academic members of the Pakistani community in Britain. It has been an important platform for new scholars (particularly postgraduate students) to become acquainted with established researchers, providing motivation to people with common fields of interest. To date, two edited volumes have emerged out of these Workshops, which offer a valuable contribution to the sadly rather small literature devoted to Pakistan in anthropology.
The Pakistan Studies Group aims to provide a focus for the exchange of ideas and collaboration by producing further edited volumes. The next proposed edited volume would be based on the emerging dialogue between social sciences and literary criticism within Pakistan Studies, which has been one of the most exciting recent developments in the forum. In the coming years the Pakistan Studies Group intends to raise funds to facilitate the attendance of renowned Pakistani writers at the Workshop, which will engender challenging, theoretically innovative and fruitful exchanges between social scientists and literary critics. It also intends to expand the scope of the Workshop by raising funds to enable the travel and much-needed participation of Pakistan-based scholars and postgraduate students.
Active members:
- Pnina Werbner (University of Keele)
- Steve Lyon (University of Durham)
- Michael Fischer (University of Kent)
- Mariam Abou-Zahab (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales, Paris)
- Martin Sökefeld (University of Munich, Germany)
- Marta Bolognani (University of Cardiff)
- Nukhbah Langah (Leeds University)
- Claire Chambers (Leeds Metropolitan University)
- Kaveri Harriss (Sussex University)