Shamira Meghani

Dr. Shamira Meghani serves as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Studies at Durham University and holds a Fellowship at the Institute for Medical Humanities. She joined Durham in September 2022 after teaching Postcolonial and Related Literatures at the University of Cambridge (2017 onwards) and other institutions including Sussex, Leeds, Chichester, and the Open University.

Her educational background includes a part-time DPhil from the University of Sussex, completed at the Centre for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies and the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence.

Dr. Meghani's research centers on postcolonial and diaspora literatures, with a focus on South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean. She investigates the intersections of gender, sexuality, caste, and colonialism. Her current projects include a book on gender variance and same-sex intimacy in South Asian literary heritage (from the 19th century to present) and another exploring gender and sexuality across postcolonial diasporas. Her publications examine metaphors of 'untouchability' in queer South Asian representations and the absence of caste analysis in HIV healthcare contexts, as well as critiques of homophobia in post-9/11 South Asian Muslim narratives.

She actively supervises PhD students, including:

• Melissa Mahmud
• Nusaiba Meshquat
• Sabeelatun-Nur Hendricks