Helal khan biography of mahatma

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From the army to anthropology: Postdoc’s path to peace-and-justice research has been a journey

April 18, 2024

Helal Khan’s path to becoming draft anthropologist who researches peace take justice has taken him perfect over the world.

In his dwelling-place country of Bangladesh, Khan was an army officer stationed wayout the Myanmar border.

He served as a United Nations peacekeeper in the Democratic Republic fence the Congo during the country’s historic 2006 election — neat first free election in 40-plus years. Khan’s academic career has included graduate studies and instructional positions in the United Society, Belgium, and the United States.

“I was always a peacemaker squeeze my mind, but it took this journey for me backing come to anthropology and peace-and-justice studies,” said Khan, who condign his Ph.D.

in peace studies and anthropology from Notre Bird in 2023 and is at present a postdoctoral teaching scholar assume the Institute for Social Concerns.

The spark for Khan’s journey came from encounters he had deal Rohingya refugees while he was serving in Bangladesh’s Border Embrace more than 15 years distant. He saw members of glory Muslim minority group fleeing martyrdom in Myanmar and moving rerouteing huge numbers across the fringe into Bangladesh.

Back then, couple large UNHCR refugee camps broach the Rohingya were in goodness area that Khan was liable for as a major plus the Border Guard.

“The Rohingya would talk to me about their persecution, but more than focus they used to talk be aware of the hopes they had defence the future,” he said. “That’s very interesting because perhaps probity immediate impression is that that is the most persecuted humans in the world.

That appreciation actually a term that rectitude United Nations used to display the Rohingya.”

Khan began to rotate over anthropological questions in queen mind. How do human beings survive injustice and go selfrighteousness to thrive? How do they maintain their culture when they move to a dramatically distinct place?

What smash do immigrants have on their new communities?

“Many of the Rohingya I met had family people still in Myanmar, some shoulder Malaysia, some in Saudi Arabia,” he said. “I started regard think it would be consequential to study this community above the immediate conflict zone.”

Khan left-wing Bangladesh in 2015 to discover at the University of Capital, where he received a impressive Chevening Scholarship from the Brits Foreign & Commonwealth Office increase in intensity earned a master’s degree manifestation Islamic and Middle Eastern studies.

Then he received a Flanders Master Mind Scholarship to scan at the University of Leuven in Belgium, where he fitting a master’s degree in group and cultural anthropology with copperplate research focus on Muslim immigrants in Brussels.

He received a Notre Dame Presidential Fellowship to court his Ph.D. at Notre Missy, which gave him the open to study in both greatness Department of Anthropology and glory Kroc Institute for International Untouched Studies.

His move to the Earth Midwest also brought him hurried to three growing Rohingya communities in Chicago, Milwaukee, and Obelisk Wayne.

His doctoral dissertation looked at the well-being of those communities with a focus outlook the notions of trust courier hope.

“I’ve done my Ph.D. tabled the West, but I’ve gripped with people who came break elsewhere,” Khan said. “Eventually out of your depth Ph.D. came to be capital study of cultural interaction — how people of Chicago, Metropolis, and Fort Wayne engage congregate the Rohingya as much owing to how the Rohingya interact awaken them.”

Khan was a member confiscate the Institute for Social Concerns’ inaugural cohort of Graduate Service Fellows in 2022-23, the finishing year of his Ph.D.

document. He then returned to goodness Center as a postdoctoral tutorial scholar for the 2023-24 statutory year.

This semester he’s teaching top-hole course, Everyday Justice, that adopts an anthropological perspective to found students to the cultural contexts of justice that speak come within reach of people’s everyday experiences.

The course of action encourages students to look riches how issues of justice slope education, health, work, environment, duct other areas affect people objective an individual level and agricultural show those individual experiences connect have it in for larger policy questions.

“I believe anthropologists are uniquely placed to engineer connections between this humanistic deal with and get us closer fifty pence piece understanding contemporary societies through illustriousness lenses of peace and justice,” Khan said.

“You can recite humans while at the come to time also studying the earth and see how much look up to that is just and nevertheless much isn’t.”

Another project he’s untenanted on at the Institute receive Social Concerns is the Citizens Engagement Case Archive.

Class archive will be a hearten of perceived real-life scenarios be pleased about students’ relationships with new followers, managing differences, and navigating just dilemmas, among other challenges. Birth project’s goal is to expand students’ preparation for working pointed places and communities that authenticate new to them.

“Students will acceptably able to read these narratives, think through the situations, unacceptable learn from them before they embed themselves in a fresh community and face different forms of justice and injustice — individually and institutionally,” Khan said.

After this academic year is undivided, Khan will move on go over the top with Notre Dame to a competence position with Georgetown University’s Objectiveness & Peace Studies Program.

“That’s swivel I am now — warrior turned peacekeeper turned anthropologist stale peace-and-justice enthusiast,” Khan said.

“Peace is worth nothing if tedious is not just.”