Biography
Anushay Malik is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of International Studies and Global Asia. As a social historian, her research focuses on labour, migration, and anti-colonial movements. A central theme in both her research and teaching is how individuals’ aspirations and their imagination of political possibilities are shaped by historical contexts.
Her current work examines two migrant communities: Bengali migrants in Karachi, Pakistan and their decades long struggle to acquire citizenship, and South Asian migrants here, in British Columbia (BC). She has co-authored a public history book that traces the history of South Asians and the labour movement in BC and is currently expanding this work to explore the experiences of female farmworkers in rural BC and Muslim migrants from South Asia. These projects inform her teaching and course development in both International Studies and Global Asia.
Recently, she has ventured into public history, co-curating two exhibitions that utilize counter-storytelling methods to highlight cross-border narratives of migration and resistance that are often overlooked. "Kaghazi Kashtiyan (Paper Boats)" at the Indus Valley Art Gallery in Karachi, Pakistan (2023) focuses on Bengali migrants in Pakistan who have been rendered stateless, while "Truths Not Often Told," at Burnaby Village Museum in Burnaby, Canada (2023-2025), emphasizes South Asian migration to Canada. Her courses engage students by involving them in museum visits and exposing them to curatorial and public history work.
Publications
Books
- Garden, B., Donna, S., and Malik, A., Union Zindabad! South Asian Canadian Labour History in British Columbia (Abbotsford: University of the Fraser Valley, 2022).
Other Publications
- Malik, A., (forthcoming 2024) “Salamat Pura” in Ammara Maqsood, Chris Moffat and Fizzah Sajjad (eds.) Lahore Viaduct: Mobility, History and Belonging in Urban Pakistan. (UCL Press).
- Malik, A., and Javid, H., “South Asia’s Partitions and the Limiting of Progressive Possibilities in Pakistan,” in Kamran Asdar Ali and Asad Ahmed (eds.) Towards Peoples’ Histories in Pakistan: (In)audible Voices, Forgotten Pasts(Bloomsbury Press, 2023)
- Chen, T., Attewell, N., Malik, A., Ludden, D., Jin, M., and Chiang, M. “The Problems and Possibilities of Global Asias Pedagogy”, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, 9, no. 1 (2023): 1-42.
- Malik, A., “South Asian Canadians and the Labour Movement in British Columbia,” in Satwinder Bains (ed.) Social History of South Asian Canadians in BC (Abbotsford: University of the Fraser Valley Press, 2022).
- Malik, A. “Between the local and the global there lies the nation: Stories of the 1960s in Lahore.” International Quarterly of Asian Studies, 52, no. 3-4 (2021): pp. 313-329.
- Malik, A., “Life histories and the nation: Lessons from Pakistan for history writing in the 21st century,” in: H-Soz-Kult, September 18 (2021). <https://www.hsozkult.de/debate/id/diskussionen-5276>
- Malik, A., “Narrating Christians in Pakistan through times of war and conflict.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 43, no. 1 (2020): 68-83.
- Malik, A., “Leftist Parties in Pakistan: Challenges and Limitations,” in M Mufti, S Shafqat and N Siddiqiui (eds.) Pakistan’s Political Parties: Surviving between Dictatorship and Democracy (Georgetown University Press, 2020): 90-104.
- Malik, A., “Radical demands of the 1960s and lessons for our present.” Pakistan Left Review May 14 (2020). https://pakleftreview.wordpress.com/2020/05/14/radical-demands-of-the-1960s-and-lessons-for-our-present/>
- Malik, A., “Public authority and local resistance: Abdur Rehman and the industrial workers of Lahore, 1969-1974.” Modern Asian Studies, 52, no. 3 (2018): 815-848.
- Malik, A., “Alternative politics and dominant narratives: communists and the Pakistani state in the early 1950s.” South Asian History and Culture, 4, no. 4 (2013): 520-537.
- Malik, A., “Pro-Poor Urban Development and the Antecedents of Poverty and Exclusion in Lahore,” Pakistan Journal of Urban Affairs, 1, no. 1, (2011) : 3-13.
GRANTS AND AWARDS
- 2023, Hari Sharma Foundation “Growing Justice: South Asian farmworker women in BC”
- 2022, CERi, SFU, “Anti-Oppression in Practice: Lessons from Artists and Educators”.
- 2021, DLC, SFU, “Building Solidarities through struggle: being Asian, Canadian and working class in BC”
- 2020-2023 Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), UK “Partition of Identity: an exploration of belonging in Bengalis in Pakistan, 1971-2021” (GBP 207,666).
- 2016-2017, Faculty Initiative Fund, LUMS “The many narratives of Christians in Youhanabad”
- 2016, PG research grant LUMS, “Bonded Labour in Pakistan”
Courses
Fall 2024
Spring 2025
Future courses may be subject to change.