Department of English, Female Campus (FC) organized a “Women Early Career Research Workshop” that was designed to promote original new research on South Asian women’s writing and advance next-generation women scholars’ research careers.
The three-day event uniquely combined specialist talks and workshops by leading researchers and writers with a dedicated programme designed to train young women researchers in academic writing, publishing and securing research funding, developing networking provide one-to-one mentoring.
“Women Writing Pakistan: Gender in the South Asian Literary Landscape” is a collaborative project between International Islamic University, Islamabad and Teesside University, UK. It is led by Dr Rachel Carroll, Dr Madeline Clements and Dr Munazza Yaqoob and is funded by the UK Global Challenges Research Fund via Teesside University.
Twenty-five delegates (MS/PhD scholars) from different parts of Punjab, KPK and Baluchistan attended the workshop. The workshop included sessions by British and Pakistani scholars and academics such as Dr. Rachel Carroll, Dr. Fiona Tolan, Dr. Madeline Clements, Dr. Ghazala Kausar, Dr. Neelam Jabeen, Dr. Saiyma Aslam, and Dr Munazza Yaqoob. The sessions included topics such as “Adapting MS/PhD Thesis into Journal Article”, “Developing Your Research Profile”, “HEC Research and Funding Opportunities and Proposal Writing” and “Research Networks and Academic Communities”, and “Academic Writing” etc.
The three keynote speakers included Muneeza Shamsie (author of Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani Literature in English and editor of And The World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women), Bushra Iqbal Malik (writer, founder of Pakistan Women Writers’ Forum/Young Women Writers’ Forum), Dr. Salma Masood (Co-founder of Pakistan Women Writers’ Forum/Young Women Writers’ Forum) and Professor Shirin Zubair (Kinnaird College for Women, Lahore).
One of the workshop’s distinctive features was the one-to-one mentoring sessions organized to provide comprehensive feedback to the delegates who had submitted journal articles. The delegates were offered detailed reviews on the pattern of international peer-reviewed journals and valuable insights to improve their research articles. The articles written by the delegates focused on different aspects of contemporary fiction by Pakistani women writers such as Kamil Shamsie, Uzma Aslam Khan, Fatima Bhutto, Sara Suleri, and Qaisera Shehraz etc.
One of the most significant outcomes of the “Women Writing Pakistan: Gender in the South Asian Literary Landscape” project is establishing a fully equipped, state of the art, Smart classroom in the Department of English, Female Campus. The smart classroom will serve as an essential resource for young women ECRs in IIUI. In addition to the workshop’s training and development opportunities, ECR delegates have also been awarded one year’s free postgraduate membership of the Contemporary Women’s Writing Association and one year’s free online subscription to the Journal of Postcolonial Writing. These benefits are designed to support their research and career development and enrich their Writing Workshop experience.