Department of Anthropology
Bio
Nursyazwani's dissertation research is situated at the anthropological interfaces of sovereignty, migration and religion, to examine the world-making practices among displaced Rohingya individuals and communities on the peripheries of ummah, the global Muslim community. Through ethnographic research with Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, resettled Rohingya in Chicago, and Rohingya online communities, her comparative study traces inter-scalar modes of Rohingya world-making across different political, embodied, transnational, and spiritual domains. She has been working with Rohingya refugees in Malaysia since 2017, resettled Rohingya refugees in Chicago since 2021, and has undertaken online ethnography of Rohingya discourses on digital platforms since 2020. She received her M.Soc.Sci. from the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore, where her research focused on the co-construction of refugee legibility among Rohingya in Malaysia. Previously, she was a Research Associate at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Research Coordinator at Advocates for Refugees-Singapore.
Education
B.A. (Hons), History, National University of Singapore. 2013
M.Soc.Sci., Sociology, National University of Singapore. 2019
Research Interests
citizenship, migration, refugees, refugee political subjectivity, politics, violence.
Selected Publications
Nursyazwani and Aslam Jalil. 2023. “‘Grateful Politics’ on Social Media: Exploring Rohingyas Use of Social Media in the time of pandemic." In Benjamin Loh and James Chin (Eds.) New Media in the Margins: Lived realities and experiences from the Malaysian Peripheries. Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore, pp. 91-115.
Nursyazwani. 2021. ““Legibility by Invitation”: Rohingya Refugees and the Struggle for Political Recognition.” Platypus, the CASTAC Blog. Retrieved from: https://blog.castac.org/2021/09/legibility-by-invitation-rohingya- refugees-and-the- struggle-for-political-recognition/.
Nursyazwani. 2020. “Mobile Refugee: Rohingya Refugees’ Practices of Imaginary Citizenship in Klang Valley, Malaysia.” American Behavioral Scientist, 64(10): 1444 – 1457.
Nursyazwani & Prasse-Freeman, Elliott. 2020. “Hidden Rohingya Heterogeneity.” New Mandala. Retrieved from: https://www.newmandala.org/the-hidden-heterogeneity-of- rohingya-refugees/.
Nursyazwani. 2020. “Moral Refugeeness, Malaysia and Covid-19.” Collecting COVID-19, Centre for Digital Anthropology, UCL, 2020.
Nursyazwani & Amoz J. Hor (2018). “Religion in the Age of Development: Encounters in Asia.” Allegra Lab. Retrieved from: http://allegralaboratory.net/religion-in-the-age-of- development-encounters-in-asia/