SOAS, University of London (The School of Oriental and African Studies)

Overview

Department of Anthropology and Sociology

Graduate Teaching Assistant

Name:

Mr Ayaz Qureshi

Email address:

ayaz.qureshi@soas.ac.uk

Office Hours:

Term 1 - Thursdays 4-5pm (room V217)

Thesis title:

Pakistan's response towards HIV/AIDS: institutional complexity and the politics of policy

Year of Study:

3

Internal Supervisors

• Trevor H J Marchand
• Magnus Marsden
• Caroline Osella

Biography

I trained in Anthropology at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, and taught MSc Anthropology for three years at Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi before starting a PhD at SOAS in 2009. I have ten years of field experience as an anthropologist in Pakistan, working on academic and applied projects relating to public health and development. My most extensive work to date has been in the field of sexual and reproductive health, and particularly HIV/AIDS. In 2004-5 I was the lead field researcher for 'men on the move', a study of the sexual practices of rural-urban migrant men in Pakistan, which was carried out with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. In 2007-8 I was anthropologist on a study of 'high-risk groups' (hijras, commercial sex workers and injecting drug users), again with the LSHTM. Later work investigated the reception of mass media messages relating to reproductive health. This research gave me an interest in the politics of HIV/AIDS policy and on the discursive construction of 'risk groups', which I am following in my PhD.

PhD Research

HIV/AIDS in Pakistan provides a window to explore governance in a context dominated by the international aid architecture, often propounding a roll-back of statutory provisions to give way to public-private partnership regimes - thus turning the developmental state into a flexible bureaucracy capable of delivering new public goods. I explore these emerging relationships with reference to policy actors, actants and subjects to present a nuanced analysis of the imagined boundaries between public, private and the civil.

I completed fifteen months of fieldwork in Pakistan involving an internship within the government apparatus; participation in events related to HIV/AIDS; participation in policy work across government, donors agencies, NGOs, and CBOs; and interviews with donor officials, bureaucrats, NGO/CBO bosses and staff, HIV positive people, activists, counsellors and treatment in-charge, and freelance consultants. I also collected  a comprehensive archive of policy and news features on the HIV/AIDS response in Pakistan.

PhD Publications

2011 - 'Sending them our best: HIV and labour migrants from Pakistan to Persian Gulf countries'. First RAI Postgraduate Conference, 20th September, Durham University

2010 - 'Pakistan's response to HIV/AIDS: state, society and subjectivation' Pakistan Workshop, 7-9th  May, Lake District

PhD Conferences

2011 - 'Sending them our best: HIV and labour migrants from Pakistan to Persian Gulf countries'. First RAI Postgraduate Conference, 20th September, Durham University

2010 - 'Pakistan's response to HIV/AIDS: state, society and subjectivation' Pakistan Workshop, 7-9th  May, Lake District