An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Suneela Ahmed (Charles Wallace Pakistan Trust Fellow, 2025).
Understanding Indigenous Communities through Water-Based Belonging and Loss in Sindh’s Cultural Landscape
The larger research investigates the entangled relationships between water, memory, and community among desert and boathouse people—those living in arid terrains and on or near water—through a de-colonial lens. Focusing on attachment, abandonment, belonging, and loss, the research aims to critique colonial cartographies and knowledge production systems that have erased or fragmented these communities' lived experiences and environmental relationships. By combining participatory mapping, oral histories, archival recovery, and sensory ethnography, this work aims to reconstitute narratives of water-linked identity, displacement, and resilience across postcolonial landscapes.
In the work in progress seminar I will be presenting this larger framework, and the findings from the initial field visits of two communities within Sindh, Pakistan, the Mohanas on Manchar Lake and the Thari community in Islamkot, Thar Desert, along with the findings from the archival research during the last three weeks at IASH, Edinburgh.
Please join in-person, or click the link below to join the webinar:
https://ed-ac-uk.zoom.us/j/83015772676
Passcode: b1QpaAD7