School of Social and Political Science

Background

Ayaz Qureshi is the author of ‘AIDS in Pakistan: Bureaucracy, Public Goods and NGOs’, which is the first full-length study of HIV/AIDS work in relation to government and NGOs. This book encourages readers to reconsider the orthodoxy of policies regarding public-private partnership by critiquing the resulting changes in the bureaucracy, civil society and public goods.

He trained as a social anthropologist at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad and the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Before joining University of Edinburgh, he has taught anthropology at Arid Agriculture University and Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan, and University of Sussex, University of Oxford and SOAS in the United Kingdom.  

He has many years of experience as an anthropologist of Pakistan, working on academic and applied projects relating to public health and development. His most extensive work to date has been in the field of sexual and reproductive health and particularly HIV/AIDS. In 2004-05 he was the lead field researcher for 'Men on the Move' study to discern sexual practices of rural-urban migrant men in Pakistan, which was carried out with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). In 2007-08 he was the anthropologist in a team of LSHTM researchers studying 'high-risk groups' for HIV/AIDS, namely hijra, commercial sex workers and injecting drug users. Around to the same time, he carried out research on the reception of mass media messages relating to reproductive health. 

For his PhD at SOAS, he worked in a government HIV/AIDS bureaucracy in Islamabad, participating in their everyday bureaucratic culture, policy work across government, donor agencies, and NGOs, and interviews with donors and government officials, NGO bosses/workers/consultants, and HIV positive people and PLHIV activists. 

He has been part of a number of research projects in the area of infectious diseases, reproductive and sexual health, and status of women in Pakistan. His research interests include sexual and reproductive health, NGOs, bureaucracy, healthcare systems, migration and labour relations and climate change and displacement. He is currently developing a research project on Health Citizenship in Pakistan which will study the doctors, heath workers and patients’ groups mobilisation around health as public good.  

Selected publications

Books

A. Qureshi (2018) AIDS in Pakistan: Bureaucracy, Public Goods and NGOs. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

A. Qureshi and A. Khan (2016) Bonded Labour in Pakistan, Karachi: Oxford University Press.

Journal articles

A. Qureshi (2023) HIV Prevention and Public Morality in Pakistan: The Secular Normativity of Development, Anthropology & Medicine

A. Qureshi (2022) The Politics of Pakistan’s COVID-19 Response: A State-In-Society Approach, Pacific Affairs 95(4):731-756

A. Qureshi (2022) Valuing Care: Community Workers and Bureaucratic Violence in Global Health, Anthropology in Action 29(2):35-43 

A. Qureshi (2022) Stigma and Strategy in Pakistan's HIV Prevention Sector, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28(4):1177-1191

A. Qureshi & Swenden, W. (2022). Introduction to the BASAS 2021 special section. Contemporary South Asia, 30(3), 384-387.

Noor, M. N., Holt, M., Qureshi, A., de Wit, J. & Bryant, J. (2020), Sexual risk-taking among homeless young people in Pakistan. Health and Social Care in the Community 2020;00:1–9

Qureshi, K, A Qureshi, Z Khawja (2016) Where There is No Weighing Scale: Newborn Nourishment and Care in Pakistani Punjab. Women’s Studies International Forum, 60, 128-135

A. Qureshi (2015). AIDS Activism in Pakistan: Diminishing Funds, Evasive State. Development and Change, 46(2), 320-338

A. Qureshi (2015) The Marketization of HIV/AIDS Governance: Public-Private partnership and Bureaucratic Cultures in Pakistan. The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology, 33 (1): 35-48

A. Qureshi (2014) ‘Uncivil society': the politics of HIV activism in Pakistan, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 20(4): 694-710

A. Qureshi (2014) Up-scaling expectations among Pakistan’s AIDS bureaucrats: enterprising selves and precarious jobs in a hybrid bureaucracy, Global Public Health, 9(1-2): 72-84.

A. Qureshi (2013) Structural violence and the nation state: HIV and labour migration from Pakistan to the Persian Gulf, Anthropology and Medicine, 20(3): 209-220.

Collumbien, M, A. Qureshi, J. Chow (2009) Multiple risks among male and transgender sex workers in Pakistan. Journal of LGBT Health Research 4(2):71-79

Collumbien, M, S. Mayhew, A. Qureshi (2009) Understanding the context of male and transgender sex work by using PEER qualitative methods, Sexually Transmitted Infections 85(Suppl II):ii3-ii7.

Mayhew, S, M. Collumbien, A. Qureshi (2009) Protecting the unprotected: drug-use, sex work and rights in Pakistan’s fight against HIV/AIDS, Sexually Transmitted Infections 85(Suppl II):ii31-ii36