Dr Farhana Afrin Rahman

Dr. Farhana Afrin Rahman is an interdisciplinary scholar of international politics whose research examines how marginalised women across the Global South generate protection, political agency, and knowledge in contexts where international institutions systematically render them invisible, developing a feminist retheorisation of humanitarian governance and international order. Her research draws on feminist and postcolonial approaches to examine lived experiences, and the dynamics of power, care, and knowledge production across the Global South. With over 15 years of experience spanning academia, international development organisations, and the policy sector, she has conducted extended periods of research/fieldwork and worked in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Kenya, Jordan, Indonesia, Kashmir, Uganda, Pakistan, and Japan.

Farhana is currently an Affiliated Lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS). Previously, she held a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship and Isaac Newton Trust Fellowship at POLIS (2022-2026), a Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College Cambridge, a Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Tokyo, and a Fellowship at the Harvard University Asia Center. Farhana received her PhD in 2021 from the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Gender Studies. Her PhD thesis was shortlisted for the 2023 International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) Best Dissertation Prize, and received the accolade “Most Accessible and Captivating Work for the Non-Specialist Reader”. She also holds an MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge (2014), and an Honours Bachelor of Arts in Peace and Conflict Studies, International Relations, and Arabic from the University of Toronto (2011).

Farhana’s first book, “After the Exodus: Gender and Belonging in Bangladesh’s Rohingya Refugee Camps” (Cambridge University Press, 2024), won the 2025 L.H.M. Ling Outstanding First Book Prize from the British International Studies Association (BISA) and was shortlisted for the 2026 British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) Book Prize. Her peer-reviewed articles and chapters have been published in various journals and edited volumes, including Journal of Refugee Studies, Feminist Review, and Journal of International Women’s Studies. She has received competitive funding for her research from several international funding bodies, including from UNESCO, UNDP, UN Women, the UK government through the XCEPT Research Fund, the Leverhulme Trust, the Cambridge International Trust, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, among others.

Her current research develops two interconnected agendas: a major comparative ethnographic project on refugee women’s vernacular protection across camps in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Jordan, and a second monograph under development examining women’s knowledge production in post-conflict Afghanistan.

Farhana co-founded Silkpath Relief Organization – a non-profit providing humanitarian assistance to vulnerable communities in Afghanistan and to refugee populations in Bangladesh and Malaysia. In 2015, Farhana helped establish the first academic programme in gender studies in Afghanistan at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, where she was Adjunct Professor of Gender Studies. Since 2012, she has worked as a consultant for organisations including UNDP, UN Women, and USAID, providing technical expertise on gender equality, social policy, and human rights across the Global South. In recognition of her contributions to gender research, Farhana received the 2021 Paula Kantor Award from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

Farhana was born in Bangladesh and raised in Zambia and Canada.