Education
- MA, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies, Columbia University in the City of New York (2010)
- BSc (Hon), Department of Social Sciences, Lahore University of Management Sciences (2008)
Teaching Experience
- Full-time Lecturer, Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts, Institute of Business Administration (2021-2024)
- Course Lecturer, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, Canada (2015-2020)
- Visiting Lecturer, Humanities and Social Sciences, Aga Khan University, Karachi (2011-2016)
- Visiting Lecturer, The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi (2013)
- Visiting Lecturer, Pakistan Study Centre, University of Karachi (2012)
Biography
Zahra Sabri has a diverse background in teaching, research, and literary translation. She teaches in the areas of historiography, Indo-Islamic history, and the Urdu, Hindi, and Persian languages and literatures. Her research focuses on Mughal history and the influence of the Persianate on Indo-Muslim languages, cultures, and traditions of learning, as well as on politics of identity centred around Urdu in South Asia. Her published work spans topics such as late Mughal ethical literature, the Islamicate biographical tradition, Islamic mysticism, classical Urdu and Persian poetry, contemporary Pakistani literary, religious, and civil-military politics, and language and educational policy in Pakistan, and greater South Asia.
She is a literary translator, and has translated folk and classical poetry from almost a dozen Pakistani languages for eleven seasons of the popular music programme Coke Studio, Pakistan. She has also worked as a journalist for the Herald magazine (Dawn), winning the Zubeida Mustafa Award for Journalistic Excellence (2013) for her article on the depiction of the Pakistani military in the country’s school textbooks. She has contributed articles to Pakistan’s national press on diverse political and educational issues, which can be accessed at zsabree.wordpress.com
During her academic career, her achievements have been recognized with a number of awards such as the Margaret Edna Anderson Fellowship in Islamic Studies (2018-2019), Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani Fellowship in Islamic Studies (2014-2015 & 2016-2017), William Cantwell Smith Fellowship in Islamic Studies (2015-2016), McGill University’s Graduate Excellence Award (2013-2015), Fulbright Masters Scholarship to study at Columbia University (2008-10), Ardeshir Cowasjee scholarship to read History at the University of Cambridge (2004-2005), and Oxbridge Karachi scholarship to read History at the University of Cambridge (2003-2006).
Published Work
Academic Articles
- “Zikr-i Mir Par Ek Aur Nazar” in an edited volume in celebration of Mir Taqi Mir’s 300th birth anniversary published by the Anjuman-i Taraqqi-i Urdu (2023)
- “Mir Taqi Mir’s Ẕikr-i Mīr: An Account of the Poet or an Account by the Poet?” in The Medieval History Journal, Sage Publications (2015)
- Co-authored article “101 damnations: British Pakistanis, British cinema and sociological mimicry” in South Asian Popular Culture, Taylor and Francis (2011)
- “Karachi men Shadi ke Riwayati Git” in An Informal Festschrift for Shamsur Rahman Faruqi ed. Satyanarayana Hegde, Columbia University (2010)
Literary Work
- “Two Translations from Kuzah”, in Harf: A Journal of South Asian Studies, McGill University (2017)
- Kuzah: Naye Likhariyon Ki Kawishon Ka Intikhab (as curator of this volume of Urdu short stories culled from a country-wide short story competition), Oxford University Press (2015)
- “A Sufi Saint”, a brief piece on recent politics around the term ‘Sufism’ in Festival, a collection of brief pieces from Pakistan writers, ed. Maniza Naqvi, Scheherzade Publications (2015)
- “Last Night” in Faiz Ahmed Faiz: Last Night: The Quatrains in Multiple Translations, Translated from the Urdu. ed. K.K. Mohapatra, Leelawati Mohapatra, and Paul H. St-Pierre, Four Corners (2011)
