Center for International and Regional Studies

Attiya Ahmad recently completed her Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University in the US. Based on over two years of fieldwork conducted in Kuwait, Nepal, and Pakistan, her research focuses on South Asian migrant domestic workers in Kuwait who have converted to Islam, a project that points to the importance of the household as a cosmopolitan space and site of confluence between Islamic reform and dawa movements, and the feminization of transnational labour migration that marks our contemporary period. Dr. Ahmad’s work brings together scholarship on Islamic studies, globalization, diaspora and migration studies, economic anthropology, and political economy.

During her tenure as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Ahmad plans to revise her dissertation into a book manuscript tentatively entitled Limits of Conversion: Dawa, Domestic Work and Migrant South Asian Women in Kuwait. She is also preparing for publication several journal articles and contributions to edited volumes, and will begin preliminary work on her next research project, which focuses on transnational networks of Islamic charity throughout West and South Asia.

Ahmad also hopes to continue work on a book of short stories, ones recounting tales of Gulf societies not from the perspective of peoples and populations as anthropologists are generally wont to do, but from the perspective of liquids that circulate and cross-cut the region, including oil, water, blood, sweat, and the ever-ubiquitous Vimto and soda pop.

Before embarking on a career in academia, Attiya worked with NGOs in Palestine, Pakistan, and Canada, and was actively involved in anti-racism, global justice, youth, and environmental movements in Canada.