We are looking forward to welcoming Gates Scholar Sara Kazmi to Queens' this coming Michaelmas term.
Scholar-Elect Sara Kazmi's PhD research looks at the marginalisation of Punjabi as a formal language and how this perpetuates poverty.
Sara was born in the city of Sahiwal in Punjab and was educated in English: Urdu and English are the main languages of education in Pakistan, although most of the population, particularly the poorest, speak Punjabi at home. Despite her introduction to the country's linguistic politics at school, it was not until Sara went to university that she became more of an activist.
At university, Sara studied European and South Asian History and Literature at Lahore University of Management Sciences, but was drawn towards performing. In her second year she joined the independent theatre troupe and literary group Sangat and started performing in Punjabi plays all over Pakistan, including in Lahore’s poorest areas as well as more rural areas. She also organised public discussions that explored the relationship between language, culture, politics and social change. “As a member of the upper middle class I was very cocooned. Through the performances we did, I suddenly saw how language differences and hierarchies were perpetuating poverty,” she says. She began to realise how language acted as a barrier to education for the poorest, putting them at a disadvantage in the education system. “It opened my eyes,” she says.
Sara's PhD research will focus on contemporary Punjabi writing’s search for a radical political subjectivity rooted in the lives and landscape of the people of Punjab.
At the root of her work is a desire to restore the status of Punjabi and to overturn the educational barriers that prevent the poorest from progressing in society. She says: “The marginalisation of Punjabi in Pakistan has led to the marginalisation of a whole section of the population.
Read Sara's full profile 'Out from the margins' on the Gates Cambridge website: www.gatescambridge.org/news/out-margins.