Dr Humaira Chowdhury is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the King’s India Institute. Her postdoctoral research explores the intertwined histories of modern capitalism and Islam through the lens of Dawoodi Bohras’ trade networks across the Indian Ocean.

Humaira received her MPhil in Modern South Asian History and PhD in History from the University of Cambridge. She joined King’s as a postdoctoral research associate on the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded project, ‘Enablers and Obstacles to UK-India Trade: Banks and Diasporas’ (2023-2024).

Research

• Artisan-labour histories
• Trade and diaspora
• Migration/immobility
• Muslim lives in South Asia

Humaira’s PhD thesis brought together two bodies of scholarship on immobility and artisan capitalism; focusing on Darzis (Muslim tailors) who stayed on in Calcutta between 1890 and 1967.

More recently, as part of the ESRC funded project at the King’s India Institute, Humaira conducted qualitative fieldwork among women weavers in the Kashmir valley, investigating the connections between trade, gendered labour informality and protracted religious conflict.

Teaching

Postgraduate

• 7YYINGA1 Introduction to Global Affairs

Publications

Chowdhury, Humaira, ‘The Life and Times of Begum Qudsia Aizaz Rasul: An Exploration of Muslim Women’s Self-Fashioning in Postcolonial India’, The Journal of South Asian Studies Vol. 44, No. 2 (2021), pp. 264-281.

Chowdhury, Humaira, ‘Staying On and “Immobility Capital”: Muslim Tailors in post-partition Calcutta, 1947-1967’, in Ajaya K. Sahoo (ed.) Routledge Handbook of South Asian Migrations (2023), pp. 164-184.

Chowdhury, Humaira and Gupta, Kamini, ‘Crafting work and workspaces: A qualitative study of the meaning of work for women in the weaving sector in Kashmir’, World Development, Vol. 188 (2025), pp. 1-16.

Policy Report

‘Gender Inclusivity in the UK-India Trade and Investment Relationship: Objectives and Possible Outcomes’, pp. 1-26. Co-authored with Dr Sunil Mitra Kumar (King’s India Institute), Dr Kamini Gupta (King’s Business School) and Nikita Singh (APPG Secretariat). This policy report was presented at the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) Roundtable Discussion held in the UK Parliament, 12 July 2023.