Kamran Asdar Ali has conducted long term field work in Egypt and in Pakistan and has frequently contributed to the media on recent Pakistani politics. He is associate professor of anthropology and Director of the South Asia Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. He is also the current President of American Instutte of Pakistan Studies

He is the author of Planning the Family in Egypt: New Bodies, New Selves (UT Press, 2002). He is the co-editor of Gendering Urban Space in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa (Palgrave 2008) and Comparing Cities: Middle East and South Asia (OUP, 2009), both with Martina Rieker, with whom he also coordinates the Shehr Network on Comparative Urban Landscapes. He has published several articles on issues of health and gender in Egypt, more recently his published work has been on Pakistan’s cultural history, popular culture, urban politics and gender issues.

He has previously taught at the University of Rochester (1995-2001). He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1998-99) and a senior fellow at the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) in Leiden, The Netherlands (2005). More recently he was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg at Berlin (2010-2011) where he finished a book length manuscript on the social history of the working class movement during Pakistan’s early years.