• PhD,  Social Anthropology, University of Sussex

Zahir Ahmed is Professor of Anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. Professor Zahir Ahmed is a distinguished social anthropologist who has obtained his MA and PhD from University of Sussex, UK. He was a Fulbright senior visiting scholar in 2011-12. 

Zahir conducted a year of fieldwork amongst the Bangladeshi diaspora in southern California, while affiliated with the Department of Anthropology at UC Irvine. This work resulted in his 2021 book, Little Bangladesh: Voices from America (Routledge, 2021). His interests include anthropology of development, of parliament and of the diaspora, mostly in Bangladesh but also in the UK and USA. He has worked with a range of universities in the UK and the USA, including the University of California at Irvine, Sussex, Manchester and SOAS.

Professor Ahmed is a member of the American Anthropology Association (AAA). He has served as a member of our Task Force on border and security walls for the past three years, reviewing evidence that documents the global proliferation of border and security walls, as well as the impacts of these walls and adverse effects of wall construction on archaeological and cultural heritage sites. Whilst doing this research, Zahir has been affiliated as an Adjunct Professor in the Center of Latin American Studies at San Diego State University (SDSU), California.

On leave from his university in Dhaka, Zahir Ahmed is now conducting fieldwork among South Asians (specifically Bangladeshi undocumented / documented migrants) awaiting entry to the US. He has been in Buffalo for a number of months, which is a surprisingly active corridor for entry into the US, and where there is a large Bangladeshi immigrant community. Zahir is now acting as Research Professor affiliated with the department of anthropology at the University at Buffalo, NY.