Campus Directory

Division Social Sciences Division

Department/ College/ Unit Education Department

Title Doctoral Student

Affiliation Graduate

Primary Office Location McHenry Library
Room 0274

Mail Stop McHenry Library

Biography, Education and Training

Samirah Tabassum is a PhD student with research interests in diaspora activism and digital media. Her current research focuses on South Asian student diasporas in North America, particularly how they engage in political activism and transnational movements through digital platforms.

She is a Senior Lecturer at BRAC University, Bangladesh, currently on study leave. Previously, she also taught at the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB) and was a Fulbright Fellow at the Department of Asian Studies at Cornell University.

Her previous research includes fieldwork with Rohingya refugee communities in Ukhiya. She also worked as a language justice consultant with UN Women, Foundation for a Just Society (FJS), Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). She serves as an Advisor to the Rickshaw Art Archive, an initiative dedicated to documenting and preserving Bangladesh's rickshaw art and visual culture.

Her broader academic interests include migration, identity, political participation, and the relationship between media and collective action as she seeks to understand how communities across geographical boundaries negotiate identities and participate in social and political change.

Awards, Honors and Grants

Fulbright FLTA Award, United States Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) (2024-2025)

Association of Commonwealth University (ACU) Gender Grant (2022)

UGC, Bangladesh Government Merit Scholarship (2018, 2020)

Jahangirnagar University Academic Scholarship (2018 - 2020)

Bangladesh Government Academic Scholarship (2011)

Selected Presentations

Navigating Challenges in Refugee Higher Education Access Programs: A Comparative Analysis of Initiatives in Refugee camps in Kakuma, Kenya, and Rohingya camps in Ukhiya, Bangladesh - presented at the National Conference on Critical-Affective Pedagogy for Bangladesh organized by Jahangirnagar University (May 2024)

Anthropocene Reinterpretation and Gender Dynamics in Postmodern Popular Renditions - presented at the 3rd International Conference on “Environmental Hazard and Gender Issues: (Re)imagining Literature, Language, and Culture of the Global South" organized by the Department of English at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) (February 2024)

Advocacy through Creative Engagements in context of Forced Displacement - presented at the Mobility/Immobility Summit, Open Society University Network (OSUN), Kenya (October 2023)

From Fragility to Resilience: Unveiling Memory Plasticity in Rohingya Art – Presented at the international conference on Plastic Turn by the Department of English, University of North Bengal, India (August 2023)

Exploring the Polymorphous Techniques of Power and Heterosexual Matrix through Cross Dressing and Gender Performativity in Bangladesh – Presented at Mapping Gendered Spaces in Language, Literature and Culture by Department of English, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh (May 2023) 

In and Beyond the “Bainda Ghor” and “Other Spaces”: Exploring the Refugee Camps of Ukhiya as Heterotopias – Accepted for Refugee, Resistance, and Recognition: Global Literary Representations in [Post]post-colonial Perspectives, 2nd International Conference by the Department of English, Shahjalal University of Science & Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh (February 2023) 

A Ride through the Rickshaw Art Archive – Presented at the English Jubilee Lit Fest, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh (March 2021) 

Exploring Formalism: A Comparative Reading of T.S Eliot’s and Jibanananda Das’ Conceptions of Poet – Presented at the XXII Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association (ICLA), Macau SAR, China (July-August 2019) 

Spacing Linguistic Cosmopolitanism in Bangladesh: Translocalism as an Alternative Paradigm – Presented at The XXI International Conference on “Revisiting Cosmopolitanism” jointly organized by Forum on Contemporary Theory and The International Lincoln Centre, Odisha, India (December 2018) 

‘My heart’s calling, Oh my friend’: Locating the Diasporic Consciousness in Rohingya Songs – Presented at The International Conference on “Refugees in the Public Imagination: Discourse of (dis)location and (dis)placement”, jointly organized by ULAB and DU (December 2017) 

Selected Publications

Tabassum, S. (2023, February). Between and beyond metamorphosing identity: A biopolitical reading of The Metamorphosis and Blackass. Crossings: A Journal of English Studies, Department of English and Humanities, University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB).

Tabassum, S. (2019). Aarar naam Arkaani: Exploring the formation of identity and diasporic consciousness in Rohingya songs. Comparative Media Arts Journal, (6). Simon Fraser University, Canada.