Asad Ali

Asad Ali is a sociocultural anthropologist whose work focuses on the relationship of the political and the religious, as mediated by language and law. He is particularly interested in rethinking the historical formation and contemporary possibilities of liberalism, secularism, and religion in postcolonial Pakistan. His current interests and projects include work on censorship and the populist language of the Pakistan Peoples Party. Before becoming an anthropologist, he worked as a journalist and documentary filmmaker. Then he taught at Harvard for some years, where he, along with Vazira Zamindar, organized the two Brown-Harvard Pakistani film festivals.