Nasir Uddin (anthropologist)

Nasir Uddin (ড.নাসির উদ্দিন) is a cultural anthropologist, post-colonial theorist and prolific writer on issues ranging from human rights, adivasi (indigenous people) issues, everyday forms of discriminations, stateness in people's everyday life, representation of media, the politics of fabrication to state-society relations in Bangladesh and South Asian .

Uddin graduated with a BSS (Honours) in Anthropology in 1999 and a Master's in Anthropology in 2000, from the University of Dhaka. In January 2001, he joined the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chittagong as a lecturer and was promoted to an Assistant Professor in 2003. He was awarded Japan Government Scholarship (MEXT) in 2004 and joined Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (ASAFAS), at Kyoto University, as a PhD student in Area Studies with a major of Cultural Anthropology. He carried out ethnographic fieldwork (from November 2005 to April 2007) in the Chittagong Hill Tracts towards writing his dissertation for PhD Degree which was conferred in March 2008. Uddin’s dissertation is about ethnic mobility, transition in everyday life, politics of marginality and engendering leadership among the marginalised adivasi of the CHT. He was promoted to an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Chittagong University in mid-year 2009. In the same year, Uddin was awarded "British Academy Visiting Fellowship 2009" to conduct postdoctoral level research in the University of Hull, UK. As a British Academy Fellow, Uddin did part of his research at many leading universities and institutions in the UK, including Cambridge University, School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), University College London (UCL), Manchester University, Oxford University, Durham University, the British Library, UK national archive, Center for Anthropology at British Museum and UK parliament archive. Soon after finishing his UK project, Uddin conducted advanced research on "The State of Ethnic Minority in the State-formation in Post-colonial State: Experience from Bangladesh" as an Affiliated Fellow of the Department of Sociology at Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi in the first half of 2011.

In 2012, Uddin was awarded Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Fellowship to do postdoctoral research in Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. Now, Uddin has taught courses in the Faculty of Social Sciences in winter 2012/13, summer semester, 2013 and winter, 2013/14 whilst doing his own research on "the anthropology of the state". Very recently, Uddin has joined the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE) as a Visiting Fellow to continue his research on indigeneity, state-making and marginality in the context of Bangladesh and South Asia.

His current field of interests include Ethnicity and the Formation of Ethnic Category in De-territorialised world; Mobility and Transition in Identity and Cultural Entity; Indigeneity, Identity-politics and Belongingness; Subaltern Studies and the Politics of Marginality; Dialectics between Colonialism and Post-colonialism; Peace and Conflict Studies; Notions of Power and State in Everyday Life; Migration and Refugee Studies; (political) Islam and Secularism, Dynamics of Regionalism and Area Studies; Paradox of Modernity and Globalization; Interface of Local Wisdom and Global Doctrine; the Chittagong Hill Tracts, South Asia. Uddin has published numerous journal articles, edited volumes and written books on the Chittagong Hill Tracts, colonialism and post-colonialism, anthropology of the state, adivasi Issues, Rohingya refugees issues, etc.