Ahmed Afzal
Election
Name
Ahmed Afzal
Candidate statement
Born and raised in Pakistan, I completed my undergraduate education at Vassar College and graduate education at the London School of Economics (MSc, Cultural Geography) and at Yale University (MPhil and PhD, Cultural Anthropology). I am an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and a contributing faculty in the Department of Asian American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Since 2001, I have carried out ethnographic research among South Asian Americans. A product of this research is Lone Star Muslims: Transnational Lives and the South Asian Experience in Texas (NYU Press, 2015).
An active member of the American Anthropological Association, Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), Association of American Studies, and Society for the Anthropology of North America and the Association for Queer Anthropology (AQA), I have served on AQA’s Program Committee and as a mentor for AAAS’s South Asian section’s mentoring initiative. As a new immigrant from Pakistan, a South Asian American, a Muslim and a gay man, serving as a Board representative for Southern California provides a significant opportunity for me to advance and contribute to initiatives that ensure the centrality of social justice, inclusion and diversity in AAAS’s programs and membership who represent diverse interests and backgrounds.
An active member of the American Anthropological Association, Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), Association of American Studies, and Society for the Anthropology of North America and the Association for Queer Anthropology (AQA), I have served on AQA’s Program Committee and as a mentor for AAAS’s South Asian section’s mentoring initiative. As a new immigrant from Pakistan, a South Asian American, a Muslim and a gay man, serving as a Board representative for Southern California provides a significant opportunity for me to advance and contribute to initiatives that ensure the centrality of social justice, inclusion and diversity in AAAS’s programs and membership who represent diverse interests and backgrounds.