Global and International Studies Building, 1004
Research Summary
Abdul Aijaz is a human geographer interested in exploring material implications of cultural and ecological stories. He is deeply invested in challenging the fact-fiction binary to understand the worldmaking potentials of scientific and fictional narratives.
His current research focuses on the multiple ways global narratives of climate change are entangled with the everyday practices, politics, and poetics of survival in the canal colonies of Punjab, Pakistan. At the intersections of political ecology, environmental humanities, and literary geographies, his research traces the history of world’s largest contiguous irrigation system in Punjab to understand the challenges it faces in the wake of global environmental crisis and water scarcity. He explores the interconnections between the material production of canal colony villages and a new aesthetics of Nature Poetry in Urdu literature. He argues that natural aesthetics in Urdu literature and spatial and social politics of canal colonies and irrigation infrastructure are two sides of the same phenomenon of colonial modernization. As contemporary global crisis threatens this colonial hydrosocial arrangement in the canal colonies, a new aesthetics and mobility of survival is taking shape that could potentially provide alternative and more equitable imaginaries of the future.
His interdisciplinary research is built upon his eclectic methodology that combines archival research with ethnography and literary analysis to explore the entangled material and fictional worlds.
Educational Background
M.A. English, Punjab University, Lahore
M.S. Political Science, Quid-e-Azam University, Islamabad
M.Phil. History, GC University, Lahore
Ph.D. Geography and English Literature, Indiana University, Bloomington
Regions of Interest
- Pakistan
- South Asia
- Global South
Research Topics
- Political Ecology
- Literary Geographies
- Critical Hydropolitics
- Environment and Sustainability Studies
Representative Publications
- A. (2023). State, Security and Survival: A minor history of people and place in a Punjab. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.
- Aijaz, A. & Akhter, M. (2020). From Building Dams to Fetching Water: Scales of Politicization in the Indus Basin. Water, 12(5).
- Aijaz, A. (2018). Yazeed: Configurations of the Self around Interest and Identities. Literary Geographies, 4(2): 204-220.
- Aijaz, A. (2018). Worldly Texts and Geographies of Meaning. Literary Geographies, 4(2): 150-155.
- Aijaz, A. 2011. Water and Power Configurations in the Indus Society. Journal of Political Science29: 47-63.