Research Projects

My research broadly focuses on how governance, human rights, security, environmental change, and human mobility intersect in societies of the Global South. Given years of learning and teaching experience in International Relations, human rights, and international organizations, I have been interested in questions that span global norms and local realities. For instance, why institutions entitled to protect people often fail to perform their duties, how state power, law, and security practices affect citizens' rights, how environmental degradation produces uneven human consequences, and how vulnerable communities negotiate migration, displacement, and development under conditions of uncertainty. These questions are significant in the twenty-first century because many of the most critical challenges facing Bangladesh and South Asia, such as police violence, forced migration, climate vulnerability, environmental harm, and weak accountability, cannot be understood only through abstract global frameworks. They require theoretical engagement with colonial legacy, institutions, power, and real-life experience.
The previous and ongoing research of mine on human rights and policing has laid the foundation of my academic identity. My Ph.D. thesis is about human rights and law enforcement in Bangladesh, with a special focus on human rights violations in Bangladesh. My dissertation investigates how and why Law Enforcement Agencies are engaged in committing human rights violations in Bangladeshi policing based on 75 interviews with different stakeholders. In the research on human rights abuses in Bangladeshi policing, extrajudicial killings, abductions, disappearances, and criminal justice practices, I have analysed how law enforcement agencies become sources of both protection and coercion. To conduct these studies, I came across legal documents, policy debates, institutional histories, human rights reports, and qualitative insights to understand the relationship between state authority, impunity, public fear, and institutional accountability. Beyond the simple logic of individual misconduct, my analyses frame human rights abuses in policing within broader political and organizational conditions. These works contribute to the ongoing debates in human rights, criminology, policing studies, and Southern criminology by arguing that criminal justice reform must be grounded in the realities of governance in the Global South.
My research expertise has also grown through continued study on migration, forced displacement, and reintegration. I have conducted research on Bangladeshi migrant workers, returned female labour migrants, overseas employment in the Middle East, NGO-led reintegration, and the political economy of Rohingya repatriation. These projects have required document analysis, policy review, and interviews with migrants, civil society actors, institutional stakeholders, and affected communities. I have become particularly interested in how human mobility is influenced by constrained agency through these works. Therefore, my research explains migration not simply as movement across borders, but as a governance process in which rights, labour, vulnerability, and aspiration are closely connected. Another area of my research relates to environmental politics, sustainable development, and human rights. My work on environmental education for sustainable development, environmental degradation and coastal vulnerability, shipbreaking workers’ health rights, women’s participation in climate governance, and gender-sensitive climate adaptation examines environmental harm as a social and political problem. I examined in particular how weak law enforcement, poor governance, limited public participation, unequal exposure to risk, and poor institutional enforcement exacerbate environmental injustice.
Overall, I am particularly interested in developing a more integrated explanation of human rights governance in the Global South by connecting state violence, environmental justice, migration governance, and sustainable development. On the one hand, I aim to interrogate how accountability can be strengthened in law enforcement and justice bodies where political influence, institutional sub-culture, and weak oversight undermine rights protection. On the other hand, I am deeply concern how migration governance can better protect workers and returnees, particularly women, from exploitation before, during, and after migration. And lastly, my research interests concern how environmental governance can be made more responsive to communities encountering climate stress, pollution, unsafe labour conditions, and displacement, thereby ensuring environmental sustainability.
I aim to pursue a research agenda that connects these fields through the broader theme of rights, governance, and vulnerability in South Asia. Specifically, I plan to deepen my work on policing, industry-academia linkage, authoritarian governance, and rights-based institutional reform and expand empirical research on labour migration and environmental justice. In the long future, I aspire to conduct comparative work across South Asian contexts to understand how different institutional arrangements shape rights protection, climate vulnerability, and migrant welfare. Finally, my research is guided by a commitment to knowledge that is rigorous, grounded, and socially meaningful. Therefore, I seek to contribute to academic debates while also supporting more accountable institutions and more humane public policy.