Author Archives: Sonia Qadir

Sonia Qadir is a Scientia PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales, Faculty of Law. She has an MA from the New School for Social Research and a BA-LLB from Lahore University of Management Sciences. She is a former Fulbright scholar and Australia Awards fellow.
A beige slide with a dark blue platypus on the left reads "COVID-19: Views from the Field" A Platypus roundtable with Ashley ThuthaoKeng Dam, Caitlyn Dye, Sonia Qadir, Rebekah Ciribassi, Kristina Jaconsen

Roundtable: “COVID-19: Views from the Field”

We’re wrapping up our five-part series, “COVID-19: Views from the Field,” with a pre-recorded roundtable. This roundtable brought our authors into conversation with each other, across continents and timezones, to discuss conducting—or not conducting—fieldwork in places not understood as COVID-19 “hotspots.” Check out the video here, and follow the links below to read the whole series, also available in the language of each field site. (read more...)

Men gathered at a meeting in a large hall. Seminar organized by Pakistan Bar Council on the law of Sedition titled National Dialogue: Unconstitutional curbs on the Freedom of Speech

Suspension, Risk, Suspicion: Field dispatches from Pakistan under COVID-19

Editor’s note: This post is the third in our five-part series “COVID-19: Views from the Field.” Click here to read an introduction written by series organizer Rebekah Ciribassi. Since the start of the Coronavirus induced lockdowns in Pakistan in mid-March, I have had to cut short my ethnographic field-work in the country’s Anti-Terrorism Courts, and shelter in place in my family’s home in Lahore indefinitely, as Australia’s borders also closed to temporary visa holders. Yet long before the world fell apart, I had come to realize that as a brown, Muslim woman with a Pakistani passport (who also happened to be studying Pakistan), every stage of the PhD/academic life was doubly arduous. From acquiring a visa to get to Australia where my university is based while dealing with my family’s disapproval; applying for, getting visas and traveling to international conferences, to getting research ethics and fieldwork travel approvals, every little milestone required many times the effort that my peers had to put in. (read more...)