Tasnia Nuran

Tasnia Nuran began her doctoral studies in the Department of Development in September 2023. Her ongoing doctoral research explores how the capacity to aspire develops among highly educated youths seeking civil service jobs in Bangladesh, a question that builds on her earlier work on class, higher education, and youth disgruntlement in the country. 

Using a life-course ethnographic approach, she investigates how the political economy, social structure, and culture shape young people’s aspirational horizons and navigational pathways. She also incorporates spatial analysis through a multi-sited ethnographic design. Tasnia holds an MPhil in Development Studies from the Oxford Department of International Development. Her MPhil thesis, Fragmented Class: Social Locations and Aspirations of Highly Educated Youths in Bangladesh, laid the foundation for her continuing interest in youth studies and the discourse of aspirations. The thesis analysed how cosmopolitan, communitarian, and gendered aspirations emerge from fragmented class perceptions among university students in Bangladesh. She also holds a Master’s and a Bachelor’s (Honours) from the University of Dhaka. Her undergraduate thesis examined urban energy poverty, focusing on unequal access to electricity and consumption patterns across socio-economic groups in Dhaka. 

Beyond academia, Tasnia has worked in consultancy, research, and project roles in both Bangladesh and the United Kingdom. As an Assistant Consultant at Oxford Policy Management, she contributed to projects in health, education, climate change, governance, and impact evaluation for the Government of Bangladesh and various development partners. She has also worked with Unnayan Onneshan, a Bangladeshi think tank, researching the impacts of the marketisation of health and education in Bangladesh. Earlier in her career, she provided consultancy for a feasibility study of women’s adaptive capacity to climate change in UNDP Bangladesh. Looking ahead, Tasnia aims to develop a comparative research portfolio on youth studies and employment aspirations, with a particular interest in extending her work beyond Bangladesh.

• Empolyment aspirations
• Youth studies
• Politics of development
• Social movements