Bio
M. Nazif Shahrani, born, raised and partly educated in Afghanistan, is currently the chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and professor of anthropology, Central Asian and Middle Eastern studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Before joining Indiana University, he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA); the Claremont Colleges; and the University of Nevada, Reno. Prof. Shahrani has held post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard and Stanford Universities and at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars at the Smithsonian Institution.
He has conducted extensive ethnographic field research in Afghanistan, and studied Afghan refugee communities in Pakistan and Turkey. Since the ouster of Taliban from power, he has regularly visited Afghanistan, publishing widely. He is currently working on a book entitled Post-Taliban Afghanistan: The Challenges of State-Building, Governance and Security.