Research

My scholarship critically examines the intersections of empire, racial capitalism, and subjectivity, with a focus on how imperial formations shape identity, belonging, and resistance within Muslim-majority societies. Drawing on ethnographic and qualitative methodologies, I investigate how racialization operates not merely through religious markers but is deeply entangled with national, territorial, and imperial frameworks of power. By centering the lived experiences and embodied subjectivities of subaltern and occupied populations, my research reveals the everyday practices through which imperial power is both reproduced and contested.

Focus Areas

A central focus of my work is the lived effects of U.S. empire, particularly in Afghanistan during the 2001–2021 occupation. My dissertation exposes how imperial technologies—ranging from sophisticated surveillance infrastructures to spatial practices of urban segregation—reshape subjectivities, self-perceptions, and social hierarchies. I demonstrate that racialization in this context unfolds through national identity narratives that cast Afghans as inherently militarized, dangerous, and backward, juxtaposed against idealized whiteness and global imperial imaginaries. This challenges prevailing post-9/11 racialization frameworks that primarily emphasize religious identity, advancing a more nuanced understanding of imperial racial logics.

Beyond Afghanistan, my research on Pakistan highlights the complex processes through which religious minorities navigate exclusionary state apparatuses to forge multifaceted forms of national belonging. This work destabilizes ethnic-civic nationalism binaries by emphasizing embodied attachments to land, territory, and political imagination.

Theoretical work

Theoretically, my work contributes to sociologies of empire, racialization, and war by bringing to bear anticolonial and postcolonial perspectives. Methodologically, I advance qualitative approaches that prioritize subaltern voices and situated knowledge to deepen insights into imperial governance, racialized violence, and modes of resistance. Through this integrated lens, my research illuminates how empire operates not only as a global system but as a deeply localized and embodied reality.