Gazal Khan is a senior research scholar in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee. Her doctoral project titled "Borderscapes, Gender and Geopolitical Space" examines how memory functions in narrating borderland experiences of refugees, focusing on the mediation, translation and the transmission of trauma. It interrogates the global aesthetics of statelessness and the ethics of narrating statelessness and erasure, using memoirs as sites of analysis. She has been awarded the Charles Wallace India Trust Grant, administered by the British Council, and is affiliated with the Refugee and Migration Lab, University of Chittagong in Bangladesh. She is a member of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) and the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA). Her works have been published in international, peer-reviewed journals like The English Academy Review (Routledge), and other edited anthologies.
Research Interests:
Refugee narratives; gender studies; memory and mediation; visual studies; Southeast and South Asian politics
Professional Background:
Ph.D. (2022–pursuing), Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India.
MA (2021), Aligarh Muslim University
BA (Hons.) (2019), Aligarh Muslim University
Research Affiliate, Refugee and Migration Lab, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh (June 2025–Present)
Coordinator, Wednesday Talk Forum, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee (Jan 2024–Present)
Teaching Fellow, IIT Roorkee (June 2023–Present): Communication and Soft Skills (UG level)
Teaching Assistant, NPTEL (Jan–Apr 2025): course on Refugee, Migration, Diaspora
Project Assistant, Global Initiatives of Acdemic Netwroks (GIAN) (May 2022): Digital Literatures and Literatures in the Digital
Grants and Awards:
The Charles Wallace India Trust – British Council Fellowship (2025–2026) for archival research in the United Kingdom.
International travel grant for paper presenation at the Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA) Annual Convention (2024), Boston, MA, by the Frank & Debbie Driesman Foundation, Potomac, US and Resolv Education & Training Programs, Massachussets, US.
Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE) Fellowship (2022–2027)- Awarded by Ministry of Education, Government of India, for doctoral research in Humanities and Social Sciences.
UGC National Eligibility Test (NET), English (2022) - Qualified for assistant professorship and research eligibility in the English literature and language.
Best Paper Award (2021) for outstanding research in Young Scholars National Research Writing Competition -Issued by Indian Institute of Technology (IIT )-Delhi.
Publications:
Gazal Khan and Sarbani Banerjee, “Assaults on Bodily Integrity and Sanctity: Genocidal Rape as a Strategy of Gendered Sexual Necropolitics in the 2017 Rohingya Crisis”,in The Invisible Refugees: Unheard Voices and Experiences of Rohingya Children and Women, Volume 3 (Forthcoming, 2025), Routledge.
Gazal Khan and Sarbani Banerjee, “Insurgent Empire: Anti-colonial Resistance and British Dissent, by Priyamvada Gopal”, in The English Academy Review, Taylor and Francis (Routledge), July 2023. Google Scholar
Gazal Khan, “Muslim Widows: Voiceless Stories of Invisible Women of India”, in Jamshedpur Research Review, UGC Peer- Reviewed, Refereed, Multi-Disciplinary International Research Journal, 2021.Google Scholar
Gazal Khan, “Archiving Widowhood and its Aftershocks: A study of Muslim Community in Uttar Pradesh”, in Gender Empowerment:Challenges and Response, Gutenberg, 2021
Conferences, Seminars and Workshops:
Presented a paper titled “Meme, Mortality and the Mobilized Memory: Rethinking Refugee Representation in Media” in an International conference conducted by Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS) of Indian Institute of Technology Madras, in September 2024.
Presented a paper titled “Memory, Mobility and Materiality: A Study of Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles and James Fable’s In Search of Myanmar” in the Early Career Research Symposium 2024 on Cross-border Mobility conducted by the German Academic Exchange Service, DAAD, in July 2024.
Presented a paper titled “The Poetics and Politics of Rohingya Protest Poetry” in the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) in April, 2024.
Presented a paper titled “Materiality of Urban Spaces in Guy Delisle’s Burma Chronicles (2007)” at Northeast Modern language Association (NeMLA) 55th Annual Convention 2024 held in Boston, Massachusetts, in March 2024.
Attended a workshop on ‘Archives in Transit: From Personal Life Histories to Public Experiences as Academics, Northeast Modern Language Association Conference, Boston, Massachusetts, 2024.
Presented a paper titled “Migrant Bodies and the Modern Homo Sacer: A Study of Habiburahman’s First They Erased Our Names” in an International conference organized by English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) in April 2023.
Presented a paper titled “Assaults on bodily Integrity and Sanctity: Genocidal Rape as a Strategy of Gendered Sexual Necropolitics” in an international conference organized by Reva University, Banglore, in collaboration with Liverpool John Moores University, England, in May,2023.
Membership and Affiliations:
American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), United States
Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), United States
Refugee and Migration Lab (RML), University of Chittagong, Bangladesh
British Council
Indian Network for Memory Studies (INMS), India