I have recently completed my PhD in Sociology & Social Policy from the Department of Sociology at Durham University in 2022. I won a fully funded scholarship for my PhD study. I value living and working in a culturally enriched and intellectually competent environment with the aim to upskill my scholarly interests and research on women’s careers in academia through a combination of theoretical and policy work applied to the field of equality, inclusion, and diversity in academic careers and beyond.
My research interests include the sociology of work, higher education and academic careers, and qualitative methodological innovations (e.g., integrated hybrid coding approaches, and qualitative data matrix techniques). I have presented my PhD work that examined the relative influence of the interplay of interpersonal, institutional, and structural enablers of and barriers to women's progression to the professorial position in Pakistani universities at conferences and seminars in the UK, Netherlands, and recently in Pakistan. These talks are well-received at academic and other social forums on addressing a new set of questions and offering innovative theoretical, and methodological concepts in the history of academic literature on the lives of university graduates and academicians in Pakistan.
The most significant, innovative, and unique learnings from my PhD research are that I introduced and rationalised the alignment of multiple analytic strategies (abductive/iterative coding process, conceptually constructed qualitative data matrices, traffic light illustrations of themes and categories) to organise, analyse, interpret, and display the study’s findings instead of traditional structures of data analysis and presentation.
I welcome the opportunities to engage in training workshops on ‘methodological innovations’ in Social Sciences with students and faculty members from different academic departments, research centers and professional organisations.
In my teaching role, I have a track record of engagement with teaching innovations by creating and delivering engaging, and up-to-date curricula, and lecture content reflected in student satisfaction and effective content delivery. I design and allocate inventive, and creative topics to students for their summative assignments. These exercises allow my students to develop original, critical, and reflective academic writing skills. Additionally, I have career experiences working with colleagues and students from diverse backgrounds that shape my scholarly and social skills and reflections.
My strength and focus as a teacher are to maintain an engaging, vibrant, and respectful classroom environment in which each student feels welcome to voice their viewpoints for reciprocal learning and growth at their personal, social, and academic levels. In addition to the classroom interaction, my research interests and focus on the intersectional understanding of faculty and graduates’ academic struggles and career needs have sensitised me to offer my students further support based on their individual needs while ensuring confidentiality and objectivity.
I feel obliged/privileged when many students, especially from minority and disadvantaged backgrounds approach me and comfortably share their academic struggles and seek advice in a secure, and non-judgmental environment. It is a real honour to be applauded by students and colleagues for being able to understand, communicate and reinforce the value of individual and regional/cultural diversity for supportive, respectful, and inclusive co-living/culture.
In my administrative role, I work as both team leader and team member ensuring to complete the given assignments within the target time frame. While engaging in teamwork and collaboration for research tasks and administrative processes, I receive appreciation for adding to interpersonal and institutional growth through my strengths of empathy, integrity, respect, and dedicated/focused efforts. For my research in archives, I have worked on funded, individual, and collaborative research projects. Recently, I received funding from the Research Grant Scheme of Punjab University to conduct a ‘Scoping Review and Systematic Mapping of Literature about the Academic Career Identities and Experiences of Pakistani Female Academics’ with a core focus on discovering themes for further investigations about women’s academic careers.
I look forward to opportunities for academic collaborations in terms of teaching, research, and mentoring along the scholarly debates in qualitative methodologies, higher education, gender, educational and career trajectories, work organizations, culture and society.