Dr. Umair Javed is Assistant Professor of Politics and Sociology at the Mushtaq Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences (MGSHSS). He completed his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 2018, where he was a recipient of the LSE Centennial PhD Studentship.
His doctoral research focused on politics and practices of accumulation, and labour relations in Pakistan's informal economy, with a specific focus on the retail-wholesale (bazaar) sector. More broadly, his research interests span various aspects of political economy, socio-economic informality, and urban public life in South Asia. His academic work has been published in the IDS Bulletin, Antipode, Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and Economic and Political Weekly. He has also contributed book chapters to volumes on Pakistan's political economy published by Cambridge University Press and Routledge, and on the sociology of South Asia published by Palgrave Macmillan. He is currently working on two major research projects: a study of social transformation, politics, and informal access to services in village settlements engulfed by urbanization in South Asian cities; and a comparative study of state welfare and citizen attitudes towards charity, taxation, and zakat in Egypt, Morocco, and Pakistan with colleagues based at the International Centre for Taxation and Development (ICTD).
Dr. Javed also contributes a fortnightly current affairs column for Pakistan's leading English-language daily, Dawn. His research and political analysis has been featured by a number of international print and electronic media outlets, including BBC, Sky News, The Guardian, Al Jazeera, The Economist, and the Washington Post.
Javed, U. (2014). 'Associational Politics in Punjab'. Economic and Political Weekly, 49 (26).
Javed, U. (2012). 'Of Patronage and Elections: Constituency Politics in Contemporary Pakistan'. Economic and Political Weekly, 47 (32).
Javed, U. (2019). 'Ascending the Power Structure: Bazaar Traders in Urban Punjab', Published. M. McCartney and A. Zaidi (Eds.), Pakistan: A New Political Economy, Cambridge University Press.
Javed, U. (2017). Profit, protest and power: bazaar politics in urban Pakistan, Published. A. Pande (Eds.), Contemporary Handbook on Pakistan, Routledge.
Javed, U. (2016). Profit in the Name of Islam: The Bazaar-Mosque Relationship in Punjab, Pakistan, Published. Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) anthology, Securing Peace and Prosperity, Sang-e-Meel Publications.
Javed, U. (2017). "Rethinking Power in Lahore: Urban Hegemony through the Mosque and the Marketplace". Annual meeting of the Social Science History Association (SSHA), Montreal, Canada.
Javed, U. (2017). "Profit, Protest, and Patronage: Bazaar Traders and the State in Punjab". British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS) annual conference, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom.
Javed, U. (2017). "Rethinking Power in Lahore: Urban Hegemony through the Mosque and the Marketplace". Annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA), Montreal, Canada.
Javed, U. (2016). "A new urban elite: The Anjuman-i-Tajran in contemporary Pakistan". European Conference for South Asian Studies (ECSAS), University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland.
Javed, U. (2016). "Elite capture and political hegemony: The bazaar in contemporary Punjab". "Pakistan: A new Political Economy" conference, Department of International Development, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom.
Javed, U. (2015). "Profit in the name of Sunni Islam: Bazaar associations and religious exclusion in urban Punjab". Annual Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI) Conference, Islamabad, Pakistan.