Ayesha Siddiqi PhD

Assistant Professor in Human Geography

Ayesha is a postcolonial geographer whose research examines how disaster risks are produced and lived on the margins of the postcolony.

Biography

Prior to joining the department in January 2020, Ayesha was based at the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway University of London. She has an interdisciplinary background and has done considerable work on the interface of academia and policy, most recently for the UK’s Houses of Parliament.

Career

• Jan 2020 – : University Lecturer, Department of Geography, University of Cambridge
• May – Dec 2019: Senior Lecturer, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London
• Feb 2016 – May 2019: Lecturer, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway University of London
• Mar 2015 – Jan 2016: Lecturer, Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath

Qualifications

• 2015: PhD in War Studies and Geography, King’s College London
• 2008: MA in Poverty and Development, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
• 2006: BSc in Economics, Lahore University of Management Sciences

Awards and grants

• British Academy Knowledge Frontiers award (2020-2023)- El Niño and Flash Floods in Peru: Bringing Knowledge on “Furia de los Rios” and “Western Science” to Understand Lag Time. Value £184,846
• Newton Fund Global Challenges Award – Support research work in the Philippines (2017): Value £35,928
• AHRC-ESRC GCRF Interdisciplinary Research Innovation Award on Conflict and International Development – After Disaster Strikes and Other Stories: The Political Construction of Typhoon Pablo in insurgency affected communities in Mindanao, Philippines (2016 -2019): Value £166,238
• UN Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) – Young Scientist Award (2016)
• AXA Research Fund Doctoral Fellowship – PhD at King’s College London (2010): Value €130,000

Research

Ayesha’s research uses hazard-based disasters, floods, typhoons, landslides to interrogate political relations and power dynamics on the margins of the postcolonial state. Her work has broadly focused on the following themes:

1. Social contracts, particularly using disasters to better understand the state-citizen relationship in the postcolony. In particular, exploring transformations through new political spaces that emerge in the aftermath of disasters.
2. The lived experience of disasters in areas affected by conflict and insurgency. In postcolonial contexts where the state-citizen relationship is mediated through a range of different processes and actors, this work seeks to shed new light on the way disasters are lived and constructed.
3. Postcolonial epistemologies and worldviews on disasters. This work is increasing engaging in dialogue with ‘Western’ science perspectives as well.

Publications

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Teaching

• Part IB Development Theories, Policies and Practices
• Part II Geographies of Postcolonialism and Decoloniality

External activities

Media coverage

• Research on Pakistan floods covered by Vox media (2023): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bVGuXrd5mg&t=6s
• CNN (2022): https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/15/asia/pakistan-climate-floods-attribution-intl/index.html
• TRT World (2022): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViWepQNEkXQ
• BBC Radio 3 (2021): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p09kl38q
• eNCA (South African Television) (2019): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-AnHivXShg&t=7s

Policy impact

• Siddiqi, A (2022). ‘Misplaced Anxiety? Supporting vulnerable peoples‘. Fast Track. Bright Blue & Konrad Adenauer Stiftung
• Siddiqi, A., Peters, K., & Zulver, J. (2019). ‘Doble afectación’: living with disasters and conflict in Colombia. ODI Report: When disasters and conflict collide: uncovering the truth.
• Siddiqi, A., & Peters, K. (2019). Disaster risk reduction in contexts of fragility and armed conflict: a review of emerging evidence challenges assumptions. Contributing paper to Global Assessment Report on disaster risk reduction 2019 (GAR19).
• 0.5FTE Special Adviser to the International Development (Select) Committee, UK House of Commons (2018 – 2019) – To work towards a more decolonial praxis for parliamentary evidence submissions.
• July 2018: UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) panel organiser for two working sessions of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2019 on Inclusive DRM – investing at community level and in local actors and Disaster displacement & DRR.

Public exhibitions

• Sept – Oct 2023: “Furia de los Rio: Sharing experiences” at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Lima. This is an exhibition of 9 individual stories co-produced by residents and community artists in pen and ink on the temporality of living through floods in the north coast of Peru.
• July – August 2019: “My Congo, My Story” at The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre. This is an exhibition of 10 individual stories produced and illustrated by residents displaced from the Democratic Republic of Congo to South Africa due to environmental destruction and violence.