Dr Farhana Rahman

Position Governing Body Fellow Junior Research Fellow
School Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Politics and International Studies
Email far25@cam.ac.uk
Department link POLIS

Farhana Rahman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow. Her research interests include gender, forced migration, development, and ethnography in Asia.

Farhana Rahman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. Prior to this, she was a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tokyo and a Non-Residential Fellow at the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at the University of Auckland. Farhana received her PhD from Cambridge University's Centre for Gender Studies, funded by the Cambridge International Trust, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, amongst others.

Farhana is currently finalizing her first book project (based on her PhD), forthcoming with Cambridge University Press. Through feminist ethnographic research, the book focuses on how the mass exodus of the Rohingya community to the refugee camps outside of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women. Her new Leverhulme project is a multi-sited ethnography exploring the transformation of gendered dynamics after forced migration at different geographic endpoints – the "camp" and the "city". Farhana's peer-reviewed articles and chapters have been published in various journals and edited volumes, including Journal of Refugee Studies, Feminist Review, and Journal of International Women’s Studies.

Farhana is also co-founder of Silkpath Relief Organization (silkpathrelief.org), a non-profit providing humanitarian assistance to individuals devastated by calamities – in Afghanistan, and with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia. In 2015, she helped to establish the first academic program in gender studies in Afghanistan, based at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, where she was a lecturer. Since 2014, Farhana has worked as a consultant providing technical expertise and training on gender equality, social policy, and human rights for various projects with UN Women, UNDP, and USAID in Asia and Africa. For her extensive research and work contributions to the field of gender and development, Farhana was the 2021 recipient of the Paula Kantor Award from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

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What's on

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Image 'Barbarians under the rug' by Enej Gala

Art Exhibition: 'After News Before Bed'

20/04/2024 at 10.00

Visit Wolfson's latest exhibition 'After News Before Bed' featuring work by emerging artist Enej Gala, winner of the Wolfson Royal Academy Schools Graduate Prize.

Photo of speaker, Catherine Namono, on a rock during her research

'Sex'-on-the-rocks: Geometric rock art and musical expressions amongst the African Pygmy forest hunter-gatherers in search of 'balance', 'harmony'

22/04/2024 at 13.00

How does the interpretation of geometric rock art in Uganda shed light on the societal and cultural experiences of African Pygmy forest hunter-gatherers?

Modern office building with large glass windows surrounded by lush greenery and trees under a cloudy sky.

Cambridge Science Park Visit

25/04/2024 at 11.00

Dive into the Cambridge innovation ecosystem with a visit to the Cambridge Science Park.

Multicolored silhouettes of human heads in a collage forming a concept of diversity or population.

The Place of Antigypsyism within Debates on Racism

25/04/2024 at 17.00

This event is the third of three roundtables that Wolfson's REACH Research Hub will be organising over the academic year under the heading ‘Hierarchies of Racism?’