We are thrilled to announce that Dr Farhana Afrin Rahman has been awarded the prestigious L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize at the 2025 BISA Awards for her ground-breaking work, After the Exodus: Gender and Belonging in Bangladesh's Rohingya Refugee Camps (Cambridge University Press).
The L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize recognizes an exceptional debut monograph that demonstrates innovative scholarship in international relations, particularly in areas of critical thought, global political economy, and non-Western approaches to world politics. Dr Rahman's book was selected from a highly competitive field for its profound insights and significant contribution to the understanding of gender, displacement, and the complexities of belonging within humanitarian crises.
After the Exodus offers a compelling and nuanced examination of the lives of Rohingya refugee women and girls in Bangladesh, shedding light on their experiences of displacement, resilience, and the reshaping of identity in the face of profound adversity. Drawing on extensive research, Dr Rahman's work challenges conventional narratives and provides a vital, human-centred perspective on one of the world's most pressing humanitarian situations.
Upon receiving the award, Dr Rahman stated, “It's an honour to receive BISA's L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize. This recognition is a deeply meaningful affirmation of the stories and struggles at the heart of After the Exodus, which was born from time spent listening, witnessing, and learning in Bangladesh's Rohingya refugee camps. It also underscores the importance of bringing refugee perspectives and feminist analysis to the centre of global politics.
I hope this award contributes to a more thoughtful and engaged conversation around gender, displacement, and belonging; amplifies the voices of Rohingya refugees; and helps shine a brighter light on the lived realities in refugee camps - on the strength, resistance, and sense of community that endure even in the most precarious conditions. I'm extremely grateful to the prize committee for this recognition."
The L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize is presented by The British International Studies Association (BISA). Dr Rahman's work stands as a testament to the power of academic inquiry to illuminate complex social realities and contribute to meaningful dialogue. https://www.bisa.ac.uk/news/bisa-2025-prize-winners-announced
About the Author: Dr. Farhana Afrin Rahman is a distinguished scholar whose research focuses on gender, refugees and forced migration, international development, lived experiences in Asia, violence and conflict. She is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, as well as a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.
About the Book: After the Exodus: Gender and Belonging in Bangladesh's Rohingya Refugee Camps (Cambridge University Press) examines how forced migration of the Rohingya from Myanmar to Bangladesh has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women, and transformed gender relations and roles in displacement. Based on 14 months of feminist ethnographic fieldwork in Bangladesh's Kutupalong-Balukhali refugee camp in 2017 and 2018, the book uncovers the everyday strategies employed by refugee women to create a sense of belonging and to make a life for themselves after forced migration. Rohingya women adapt to camp life by negotiating marriage and intimate experiences, adjusting to changing gender divisions of labour, and navigating encounters with humanitarian aid agencies and male camp leaders. These women strategically bargain shifting power relations to reconstruct their lives in displacement, thereby reclaiming agency and asserting their identity through the spaces they create, inhabit, and reshape; the coping mechanisms they employ; and the bonds of kinship and community they forge. For more information on Dr Rahman's book: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/after-the-exodus/2DD28018FD5AAB92A1B5B7DD6A03F16E
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