Ayesha Omer

Synopsis of Research in Shanghai (September 2 - December 15) :

Omer is a global media scholar from Karachi, Pakistan, whose research explores issues of political sovereignty, ecology, and technological mediation at the indigenous borderlands of Pakistan. She is currently completing her Ph.D. in the Department of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. Her dissertation examines critical energy, trade, and internet infrastructures of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): the Gwadar port at the Arabian Sea, the coal mine and power plant in the Thar Desert, and the Fiber Optic cable across the Karakoram Highway in the Himalayas. Combining ethnographic fieldwork, archival research, and visual media analysis, this project reveals how these ecological, political, and technological processes are today inflecting the imaginaries of the Pakistani nation and the Chinese globalization project. As a Global Dissertation Fellow at NYU Shanghai, she will conduct research on the construction of the transnational Karakoram Highway (KKH) from 1966-1978 in order to chart the history of Chinese infrastructure in Pakistan.