SPEAKER BIOS

Professor Imran Ali has an Honours degree from the University of Sussex, UK, and a Doctorate from the Australian National University. He has been Professor of Economic History and Business Policy at the Lahore University of Management Sciences; as well as Rector/Dean, and Professor of Business Policy, at the Karachi School of Business and Leadership in Pakistan. He has also taught Economic History at the University of New South Wales and the University of Melbourne in Australia. He has held several visiting positions, including Institute of Commonwealth Studies and School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London; Harvard Business School; and University of Sydney.

Professor Ali has a large number of international publications on Pakistan and the Punjab, including “The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885-1947” (Princeton and Oxford University Presses), The Punjab Canal Colonies 1885-1940, and co-editor of “Pakistan: The Contours of State and Society” (OUP).

His research work is on Pakistan’s economic history, issues of political economy, agribusiness, and business development and strategy. He has advised several national and international organizations, including World Bank, USAID and UNDP. He has also served on various government and private sector boards and committees, such as Punjab Finance Commission, Institutional Review Board of SKMT, Syndicate of Punjab University, Global Council of the Asia Society, Board of Governors of Dairy & Rural Development Foundation and Pakistan Institute of Management; and Board of Directors of Pakistan Railways, Dawood Hercules Fertilizer Limited, and Innovative Investment Bank.

Dr. Abid Aman Burki, Professor Emeritus of Economics at LUMS, joined in 2002, serving as Professor from 2005 to 2021. He held key administrative roles, including Founding Graduate Program Director of Economics (2002–2020) and Director of the Centre for Management and Economic Research (2003–2010). Previously, he was at Quaid-i-Azam University from 1985 to 2002, serving as Head of the Economics Department (2000–2002). He has taught at Kansas State University and BZ University. His research is published in journals like World Development and he has consulted for organizations such as the World Bank and UNICEF. He has co-authored over 50 reports, including notable works like "From Swimming in Sand to High and Sustainable Growth" (2022), and has supervised numerous PhD and master's theses. He holds a PhD in Economics from Kansas State University and received the Izaz-i-Fazeelat award in 2001. 

Dr. Sanval Nasim, an Assistant Professor of Economics at Colby College, focuses his research on environment and political economy, particularly studying citizens’ responses to environmental degradation in developing countries and the relationship between state capacity and public goods provision in such contexts.He holds research fellow positions at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives (IDEAS), the Center for Economic Research in Pakistan (CERP), and the Mahbub ul Haq Research Centre (MHRC). Before joining Colby College, he served as an Assistant Professor of Economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. He earned a Ph.D. in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics and Policy from the University of California, Riverside (2015) and a B.A. from Colby College (2008). 

Dr. Hadia Majid is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics at LUMS. Her research agenda considers the impact of monetary and public resource constraints on individuals in Pakistan with a special focus on women’s access to decent, empowering work. She has published in international journals and is currently editing a book titled Gender at Work in Pakistan. She has received grants from several agencies including ESRC-DFID, Oxfam, IDRC, IGC, IFPRI among others and has acted as a consultant for numerous government and non-governmental agencies on gendered labor market outcomes.  A Fulbright scholar, she has a PhD from The Ohio State University and MSc from University of Warwick. 

Dr. Anthony Acciavatti works at the intersection of architecture, landscape, and the history of science and technology. He is the author of Ganges Water Machine: Designing New India’s Ancient River (Applied Research & Design, 2015), which is an atlas of the enterprise to transform the Ganges into the most hyper-engineered landscape in the world, and the first comprehensive mapping and environmental history of the Ganges River Basin in over half a century. He spent a decade hiking, driving, and boating across the Ganges to map it and to understand the historical conflicts over water for drinking, agriculture, and industry. Along with the book, Acciavatti designed his own instruments to map the choreography of soils, cities, and agriculture across the Ganges River basin. In 2023 the Victoria and Albert Museum in London acquired these instruments, along with his drawings and photographs, for the permanent collection. His work has been exhibited at the Milan Triennial, biennials in Venice, Seoul, Rotterdam, Quito, as well as at the Nehru Science Museum, Rhode Island School of Design, Harvard University, and Columbia University.

Dr. Hasan Karrar, holding a PhD in East Asian Studies from McGill University, specializes in China and Central Asia. His current research focuses on bazaars and markets in these regions, examining their roles within local economies and political structures. He has published extensively on transnational connections and geopolitical alignments in China, Central Asia, and north Pakistan. His broader interests encompass development, governance, and securitization on state peripheries, as well as the deployment and representation of Chinese economic and strategic power. He serves on the editorial board of Asian Anthropology, the advisory board of the International Quarterly of Asian Studies, and the academic committee of the Asian Borderlands Research Network. Formerly chairing the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS, he has held visiting affiliations with esteemed institutions in Canada and China. 

Dr. Sunil Amrith’s research focuses on the movements of people and the ecological processes that have connected South and Southeast Asia, and has expanded to encompass global environmental history. He has published in the fields of environmental history, the history of migration, and the history of public health. Amrith is the recipient of the 2022 Dr. A.H. Heineken Prize for History, a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship, and the 2016 Infosys Prize in Humanities. His work on environmental justice received a “scientific breakthrough of the year” award from the Falling Walls Foundation in 2022. Amrith’s new book, to appear in 2024, is The Burning Earth, an environmental history of the modern world that foregrounds the experiences of the Global South. In current work, Amrith continues to study the relationship between migration and environmental justice. He has also begun work on the comparative history of environmentalism in India and Indonesia, and on a long-term research project on rice and planetary health. Looking ahead, Professor Amrith will deliver the Radhakrishnan Lectures at All Souls College, Oxford in 2025, and the Wiles Lectures at Queen’s University Belfast in 2026.

Ms. Zehra Zaidi, a Visiting Assistant Professor at the Shaikh Ahmad Hassan School of Law, LUMS, brings extensive legal experience to her teaching role. With a background in practicing law in Karachi and London, she specializes in company, commercial, environmental, aviation, and shipping law. With over a decade of teaching experience, she has taught diverse legal subjects including contracts, torts, and public international law. Zaidi's research focuses on compensation claims for pollution arising from oil spills in the global south. She holds a BA/LLB from the University of London’s International Degree Program and was called to the Bar at Lincoln’s Inn, UK. 

Mr. Ahmad Rafay Alam is one of the leading environmental lawyers and activists in Pakistan. Mr. Alam regularly advises the federal and provincial governments and provides corporate clients strategic sustainability insights. He also serves as a member of the Pakistan Climate Change Council, the Punjab Environmental Protection Council, the Hisaar Foundation’s think tank on the rational use of water, and is an advisor to the Air Quality Asia. 

Dr. Seemi Waheed works in water governance and policy with eight years of dedicated experience. From an institutionalist theoretical perspective, she particularly focuses on groundwater governance, community participation and self-organization reflecting a deep understanding of the complexities and challenges within this crucial domain.

Dr. Seemi Waheed is a public policy expert with over 32 years of service to the Government of Pakistan. She specializes in civil service training reform and project coordination. Dr. Waheed is also an active member of International Associations for the Studies of Commons and International Water Association.

Dr. Maya Prabhu is a Clinical Associate Professor (Adjunct) of Law at Yale Law School and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Prabhu obtained her medical degree from Dalhousie Medical School in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and completed residency training in adult psychiatry and a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine.   She graduated from the McGill Faculty of Law in Montreal, Canada; and then practiced corporate litigation at Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and was a Deputy Counsel with the Independent Inquiry Commission (“the Volcker Inquiry”) which investigated allegations of fraud and corruption in the U.N. Oil-for-Food-Programme.

As a Consulting Forensic Psychiatrist to the State of Connecticut, she provides opinions on high-risk cases, including persons found Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity. She testifies regularly in state and federal court and before the Psychiatric Security Review Board. She consults with legal organizations with regard to the psychological impact of lawyering and collaborative representation of clients who have mental illness. Her research areas of interest include refugee health, forensic psychiatry, climate migration, and issues at the nexus of health and international law.

Dr. Sana Khosa is an Assistant Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS. She completed her PhD in Public Affairs within the research stream of Public Administration with a focus on Disaster Management. Her research interests include collaborative networks in disasters such as floods in Pakistan, response, recovery and redevelopment after climate-induced disasters, and social networks in complex events. Her ongoing work is on studying vulnerabilities and resilience in disaster response in Punjab, urban flooding, and disaster governance. Her work has been published in Administration & Society, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. 

Dr. Maryam Ibrahim is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Environmental Studies Minor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, LUMS. She is a Human Geographer with a research focus on urban development, housing, and forms of gender exclusion within urban policy frameworks. She completed her PhD from King’s College London in Geography where her research explored gender disconnects in urban improvement programs for low-income settlements in Pakistan. Maryam Ibrahim has also been working as a consultant for the Government of Punjab and International Development Organizations. Her past and ongoing work includes a policy focus with various forms of urban spatial analyses, population and housing analyses and urban and policy and planning projects. Her current work analyzes linkages between housing and resilience in light of the crucial vulnerabilities Pakistan is exposed to due to Climate Change. 

Dr. Nosheen Zaidi, an esteemed Professor and Researcher specializing in Community Medicine and Public Health, offers invaluable insights into the intersection of climate change and public health. With a wealth of academic qualifications and international certifications, she contributes expertise to climate conferences, advocating for sustainable solutions to global health challenges. Dr. Zaidi is mainly interested in studying the role of de novo lipid synthesis pathways in cancer cell development, progression, and survival. To explore the relative importance of dietary and endogenously synthesized lipids for cancer cell progression is one of her ongoing/future projects' key aims. Currently, she is also a visiting scientist at Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung (BAM) (2017-2021) (Supported by Georg Forster Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers by the Humboldt Foundation, 2017- 21). In addition, she is serving as a director of Cancer Research Centre (CRC) | University of the Punjab since Dec 2019. 

Dr. Abubakr Muhammad is an associate professor of electrical engineering and the founding director of the Center for Water Informatics & Technology (WIT) at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, USA winning an institute-wide best Ph.D. Dissertation Award. Following postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and McGill University, he joined LUMS in 2008, where his group does research in agricultural robotics, human-water systems, and climate analytics. He has held visiting positions at other top institutes including the University of Oxford, ICTP, and KAUST. He serves on various advisory panels to government agencies and industry on the use of emerging digital technologies for tackling issues related to climate change, disaster management, water management, and food security. 

Dr. Fazilda Nabeel is a climate and water governance expert with more than 13 years of teaching and research experience in the development sector. Dr. Nabeel is an advisor for the Ministry of Climate Change, Government of Pakistan’s and United Nation’s Living Indus Initiative for the ecological restoration of the Indus Basin in Pakistan. She is also teaching courses on the Business Case for Climate Action as visiting faculty at SDSB LUMS. She completed her Ph.D in Development Studies from the University of Sussex (UK) with a research focus on the political ecology of groundwater (non) governance in the Indus Basin of Pakistan. Dr. Nabeel has consulted widely for the Government of Pakistan and international development organisations on a breadth of policy issues in the climate and transboundary water and groundwater space with a particular focus on climate and water justice in South Asia.