Nasir Uddin (anthropologist)

Nasir Uddin
Born	ড.নাসির উদ্দিন
Occupation	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 discrimination, state in people's everyday life, representation of media, and the politics of fabrication to state-society relations in Bangladesh and South Asia.

Education

Dr. Uddin graduated with a BSS with Honours in Anthropology in 1999 and a Master Degree in Anthropology in 2000, from the University of Dhaka.

Later in his career, he studied at the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies (ASAFAS) as a PhD student in Area Studies with a major of Cultural Anthropology at the Kyoto University in 2004. From November 2005 to April 2007, he carried out ethnographic fieldwork in the Chittagong Hill Tracts towards writing his dissertation for his PhD Degree, which was eventually conferred in March 2008. Uddin's dissertation was about indigenous mobility, transitions in everyday life, politics of marginality, and engendering leadership among the marginalized adivasi of the CHT.

Career

In January 2001, Uddin joined the Department of Anthropology of the University of Chittagong as a lecturer and was promoted to an Assistant Professor in 2003. In 2004, he was awarded the Japan Government Scholarship(MEXT).

He was soon 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, United Kingdom. As a British Academy fellow, Uddin did research at many leading universities and institutions in the United Kingdom, including Cambridge University, School of Oriental and Asian Studies (SOAS), UK national archive, the British Library, and Oxford University among others. Soon after finishing his project in the country, 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 at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in Germany. During this time, Uddin has taught courses in the Faculty of Social Sciences from 2012 to 2014 whilst doing his own research on the anthropology of the state. Uddin has also 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.

Fields of research

His current field of research] 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;
• and Interface of Local Wisdom and Global Doctrine.

Journal articles

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, and Rohingya refugees issues among others.