Hafsa Arain

Hafsa Arain is a lecturer in the Women’s and Gender Studies program at MIT. Their research explores the factors that contributed to the emergence and development of queer and trans networks of people assigned female at birth in Karachi, which is Pakistan’s largest and most diverse city. Looking particularly at these networks’ constructions of history and genealogy, geographies of national and urban belonging, inter-class and inter-caste dynamics, and the introduction of digital community building possibilities, Hafsa’s research challenges assumptions about queer globalizations which separate queer identity categories into either local or global. Using theoretical frameworks from interdisciplinary sources, including queer of color critique, psychological anthropology, Islamic studies and history, and recent studies of digital personhood, Hafsa’s work connects otherwise disparate literatures in the hopes of developing viable frameworks to better illuminate the conditions of queer and trans individuals and communities living within Muslim-majority and postcolonial nation-states.

Hafsa is completing her PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology at Boston University in summer 2024. They hold a master’s degree in Islamic studies from Claremont School of Theology as well as a bachelor’s degree in English literature and religious studies from DePaul University.