Student Highlights
Gullali Jogezai
Gullali Jogezai, a development studies graduate batch 2012, was selected as an Emerging Leaders of Pakistan fellow 2013, through which she represented PIDE in the USA. The Emerging Leaders of Pakistan Fellowship Program seeks to empower the next generation of Pakistan’s leaders. The program identifies, cultivates, and supports young people in Pakistan who have the potential of becoming future leaders by providing resources and opportunities to strengthen their engagement within civil society.
Gullali recounts her trip as a life changing experience, both personally as well as professionally. Each year, fifteen young leaders from Pakistan visit the United States to meet with policymakers, community leaders, diaspora communities, entrepreneurs, and regional experts, among others. This trip empowered Gullali with skills and ideas through sessions with prominent American thinkers, innovators, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and civil society leaders. On return to Pakistan, She utilized these resources to build her own movement in Pakistan as she always aimed to work for the betterment of the country through different innovative initiatives. Even after two years of her visit, the knowledge, experience and networking gained from this program encourages her to strive for positive change in the society.
Fahd Zulfiqar
Fahd Zulfiqar (Development Studies Research Associate and alumnus 2012) was invited to attend Conference and Post Conference Training (PCT) Programme at Dublin, Ireland in June 2015. The conference was organized by International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture, and Society (IASSCS) and hosted by Dublin City University (DCU). The Scholarship was granted by IASSCS and Ford Foundation. This was his second presence at the IASSCS conference. In 2013, he had presented a student paper titled “Contextual correlates of sexual practices posing higher risk for HIV infection among male-female transgender persons in East, South, and South East Asia, the Middle East and North Africa” at Buenos Aires, Argentina. The theme of this year’s IASSCS conference was, “Literacies and sexualities in cultural, fictional, real, and virtual worlds: past, present, future perfect?” He ran the session titled ‘Transactions’ in which he, also, presented two chapters from his MPhil thesis titled, “Money can buy love”: Contextualizing love in the zenana/khusra communities of Rawalpindi, City Kasur, Mansehra City, and Kot Radha Kishan. His thesis, supervised by Dr. Mina Zulfikar Ali, was well received by the faculty of DCU. This was the 10th conference organized by IASSCS. The previous conferences were held at USA, UK, South Africa, Spain, Peru, Vietnam, Amsterdam, Argentina, and Australia.
Asad ur Rehman
Asad ur Rehman (DS Batch 2012) received UNDP-HEC one year fellowship/Scholarship in 2013-14 on the project “Federalism in Pakistan”. His area of Study was “Political Economy of Democratic decentralization and local political associations in Punjab: A Case Study of Sialkot District. Part of Study was presented at Sustainable Development Policy Institute on 29 October 2015 titled as Local Bodies Elections and the Vote-Exchange: Implications for Democratic Decentralization.
Ms. Sadaf Farooq
Ms. Sadaf Farooq, alumna from Development Studies 2012 Batch, traveled to The Hague, Netherlands in November 2015 to give an oral presentation on her research during the 13th Development Dialogue held at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her visit to Netherlands was fully funded by the respective university where she participated along with the academic community from different universities such as Chicago, Oxford and London School of Economics.
Ms. Saira Zafar Khan
Ms. Saira Zafar Khan (Research Associate Development Studies and alumna 2012) presented her Working Paper on November 25, 2015 at PIDE, which was based on her MPhil thesis titled “Higher Education for Women: A Self-empowerment and Gender Perspective”, supervised by Dr. Mina Zulfikar Ali. In this paper Miss Khan has made an attempt to understand the intrinsic value of higher education in empowerment of women students; placing spotlight on the personal dimension of women empowerment, power’s conceptualization and Higher Education as knowledge issue.
Muhammad Rahim Shah
M.Phil development Studies Student receives leadership fellowship
Muhammad Rahim Shah, MPhil Development Studies (2013), received a prestigious Atlantic Council’s fellowship, geared for the Emerging Leaders of Pakistan 2014. This program seeks to empower the next generation of Pakistan’s leaders through creating sustainable forums of collaborations. Rahim was on three weeks visit to USA with other fellows and had met high officials from White House, department of state, policy makers, civil society diaspora, media and private sector.