C.V. | Current Project | Publications
Research Interests
Sand, Island, Infrastructure, Materiality, Rohingya
Research Area(s)
Coastal regions and Islands of Bangladesh, Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar and Bhasan Char
Profile
Javed Kaisar is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology and a member of the Emmy Noether Group on "Sand: The Future of Coastal Cities in the Indian Ocean".
Javed holds a Bachelor and a Master of Social Science in Anthropology from Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh. He also completed a second Master of Science in Social Anthropology at Stockholm University, Sweden. In 2013, he began lecturing at the Department of Anthropology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) in Bangladesh. During his teaching career, he taught a number of courses including 'Anthropology of Design', 'Urban Anthropology', 'Culture, Space and Globalization', and 'Visual Anthropology'. He also taught the course 'Culture, Place and Space' in the Department of Architecture at SUST. These courses helped him to interrogate the work of infrastructures and the material foundation of cultures, society and the environment.
In addition to his teaching, Javed conducted several ethnographic research projects in different places in Bangladesh. In 2019-20, he explored the dynamics and tensions between resident Bengalis (framed as hosts) and Rohingya refugees (understood as guests) in Cox's Bazar, where the lived experiences of hospitality are shaped by complex forms of social interaction of communication between the two communities. In 2019, Javed conducted another study in collaboration with INCIDIN Bangladesh to explore the challenges of children involved in riverbed sand and stone mining in northeastern Bangladesh.
Javed has a passion for photography, especially street photography, and takes a keen interest in the visual arts. He was involved in the filming of the short documentary "I am Time" (2013) and the forthcoming feature film "Sand City" directed by Mahde Hasan.