Noman Baig
Education
- Ph.D. in Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin (December 2014)
- M.A. in Political Science, University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (May 2008)
- B.A. in Political Science, University of Central Oklahoma, USA (May 2005)
Research Interests
- Self and subjectivity, and interiority; phenomenology, meditation, and experiential knowledge; money and markets; space and cities.
Biography
Dr. Noman Baig has been Associate Professor of Comparative Humanities and Social Development and Policy at Habib University since 2021, having joined as Assistant Professor in 2015. He also serves as a Reviewer for the Wenner-Gren Foundation (2023–present). Before Habib, he was a Scientific Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany (2013–2015), and completed his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin (2014), where his doctoral ethnographic research in Karachi’s Bolton Market (2011–2013) examined the convergence of Sufi moral discourse and meditative zikr practices with modern financial capitalism in shaping merchants’ subjectivity.
Dr. Baig teaches courses including What is Modernity?, Hikma: The History of Islamic Thought, Perspectives in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Development and Social Change, and Anthropology of Trade. He has given more than 30 invited talks and conference presentations since 2013 at venues including the National University of Singapore, Harvard South Asia Institute, LUMS, Quaid-i-Azam University, and the Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience (Prague), and continues to be an active public voice in Karachi through venues like the Adab Festival and the Karachi Arts Council.
He is currently completing a book manuscript, Cosmonomics: Commerce and Cosmology in Pakistan (under review, University of Washington Press), alongside articles on Karachi-Dubai trade flows and Sufi phenomenology under review at Modern Asian Studies and the Journal of Contemplative Studies, and a second monograph, Calligraphic Perception in the Shattered World, currently in preparation.
Selected Publications
- “Disruptive Transformation: Digitising Financial Practices in Pakistan,” International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, November 2021.
- “The Pen’s Screech: Muslim Spiritual Practice of Arabic Calligraphy,” Hazine, October 2021.
- “Phenomenology of Breath: A Meditation on Breathing in the Time of COVID-19,” SUFI Journal of Mystical Philosophy and Practice, Issue 101.
- “The Politics of Fiscal Sentiments in Pakistan,” Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology, March 2021.
- “‘Its gait is too brisk:’ Money Mobility in Karachi’s Foreign Exchange Market,” Journal of Cultural Economy, April 2019.
- “The Langar: People’s History of Hunger,” Pakistan Perspective, 26(2), 2021.
- “Aspiring Present: Breathing Life into the ‘City of Death,’” in Handbook of Religion and the Asian City, ed. Peter van der Veer, University of California Press, 2015.
Honors, Fellowships & Grants
- Hunts Fellowship, Wenner-Gren Foundation (2022)
- Institute for Advanced Studies, Nantes/Paris (2020)
- Professional Development Grant, Habib University (2019)
- Summer Research Grant, Habib University (2018)
- Research Grant, Institute of Money, Technology, Financial Inclusion, UC Irvine (2015)
- Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Max Planck Institute (2013–2014)
- Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, National Science Foundation (2013)
- Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, Wenner-Gren Foundation (2012)
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