A Conversation with Dr. Yasmin Saikia on Indo-Muslim History

March 30, 2022: IBA's Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts hosted a session: A Conversation with Dr. Yasmin Saikia on Indo-Muslim History. The event was moderated by Dr. S Akbar Zaidi, Executive Director, IBA.
Date: Wed, Mar 30, 2022 
Time: 1:45-3:45 pm 
Venue: JS Auditorium, City Campus

About the Speakers

Dr. Yasmin Saikia is a Professor of History in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and the Hardt-Nickachos Chair in Peace Studies at the Centre for the Study of Religion and Conflict at the Arizona State University, USA. Her research and teaching interests invoke a dynamic transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue situated at the intersection of history, culture, and religion. With a specific focus on religion, gender, identity, and memory, and on contestations and accommodations in South Asia between local, national, and religious identities, she examines the Muslim experience in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, and the discourse of nonviolence alongside the practice of violence against women and vulnerable groups. Her work engages histories of pre-modern and contemporary South Asia, and the history of Islam and Islamic values of peace. She is the author of the award-winning books, Fragmented Memory: Struggling to be Tai-Ahom in India (Duke, 2005) and  Women, War, and the Making of Bangladesh: Remembering 1971 (Duke, 2010). She has also edited and co-edited several books such as  Cambridge Companion to Sayyid Ahmad Khan (Cambridge, 2019) and  Women and Peace in the Islamic World: Gender, Influence and Agency (I. B. Tauris, 2015). Currently, she is writing a trilogy on ‘People’s Peace’ and is researching on select Muslim revolutionaries of the interwar period (1920-1940) for writing a monograph on the "Muslim Imagination of Freedom from British Colonialism." Dr Saikia hails from Assam in northeast India and has deep connections with scholars and public in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Turkey. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and her BA in History from Aligarh Muslim University, India. 

Dr. S Akbar Zaidi is the Executive Director of the IBA, Karachi. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Cambridge. His latest book  Making Muslims: Reading Publics and Contesting Identities in 19th Century North India was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.