Dr Farhana Afrin Rahman

Position Governing Body Fellow Junior Research Fellow
School Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Politics and International Studies
Email far25@cam.ac.uk
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Farhana Afrin Rahman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and Isaac Newton Trust Fellow. Her research interests include gender, forced migration, development, and ethnography in Asia.

Farhana Rahman is 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 ��ӽ紫ý Cambridge. Prior to this, she was a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Tokyo, a Non-Residential Fellow at the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at the University of Auckland, and a Fellow at the Harvard University Asia Center. Farhana received her PhD in 2021 from the University of Cambridge's Centre for Gender Studies, funded by the Cambridge International Trust, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, amongst others. She also holds an MPhil in Multi-Disciplinary Gender Studies from the University of Cambridge (2014), and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) 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", is forthcoming in 2024 with Cambridge University Press. Through feminist ethnographic research, the book explores how the mass exodus of the Rohingya community to the refugee camps outside of Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh has affected the gendered subjectivities and lived experiences of Rohingya refugee women. Her Leverhulme project is a multi-sited ethnography exploring the transformation of gendered dynamics after forced migration at different geographic endpoints – the "camp" and the "city". Farhana's 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.

Farhana is a recipient of the UNESCO Silk Roads Research Grant 2023 where she is currently conducting a project titled "Gendered Fields of Red Gold: Women and Saffron Along the Silk Road". She is also co-founder of Silkpath Relief Organization (silkpathrelief.org), a non-profit providing humanitarian assistance to individuals devastated by calamities – in Afghanistan, and with Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Malaysia. In 2015, she helped to establish the first academic program in gender studies in Afghanistan, based at the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul, where she was a lecturer. Since 2014, Farhana has worked as a consultant providing technical expertise and trainings on gender equality, social policy, and human rights for various projects across the globe. For her extensive research and work contributions to the field of gender and development, Farhana was the 2021 recipient of the Paula Kantor Award from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

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A triptych of abstract images: a smooth round stone nestled in a curved rock, distorted eyeglass frames scattered on a white background, and a high-contrast black and white microscopic image resembling organic or cellular structures.

Art Exhibition: ��ӽ紫ýat 60

14/06/2025 at 10.00

Celebrating Wolfson’s 60th anniversary year, this exhibition highlights the range of artistic disciplines and styles that have made up our exhibitions over the years.