Nida Kirmani joined LUMS in 2011 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology. She has served as the faculty director of the Saida Waheed Gender Initiative and helped establish the Gender and Sexuality Studies minor at LUMS. Nida has published widely on issues related to gender, Islam, women’s movements, development and urban studies in India and Pakistan. She completed her PhD in 2007 from the University of Manchester in Sociology. Her book, Questioning ‘the Muslim Woman’: Identity and Insecurity in an Urban Indian Locality, was published in 2013 by Routledge. She has also edited a volume on Marginalisation, Contestation and Change in South Asian Cities with the Oxford University Press in 2022 and co-edited a volume on Gender Studies in Pakistan in 2026 with Folio Books. Nida has published extensively about experiences of urban marginality, gender and violence in the area of Lyari in Karachi and also produced three documentaries based on this research. She recently completed a research project on the role of women in the Baloch nationalist movement, and her current research explores the experiences of young, single women living outside of the heteropatriarchal family in Lahore.