Co-produced by Aga Khan University Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, The Aga Khan Museum and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture Education Programme and held in the iconic Aga Khan Centre.  

 Walls. Fences. Checkpoints. These are the images that spring to mind today when we think about the border.  South Asia is also playing a central role in this trend. But today it is not the famous India-Pakistan border, home to military confrontation and Bollywood epics, that is the focus. Now attention is on the borders between India and Bangladesh and Pakistan and Afghanistan. Drawing from ten years of fieldwork in Pakistan, as well as Europe and Turkey, Sanaa Alimia’s lecture discusses the case of “border-making” between Pakistan and Afghanistan and how it relates to regional and global trends. Alongside, analyzing the infrastructure and technologies that are a part of this story, she also pays attention the people involved: Afghans in Pakistan. By doing so, she reveals a tension between how the state tries to perform the border “from above” and how this is resisted “from below.”

 Speaker: Sanaa Alimia is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations at the Aga Khan University International (London). 

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