Description of Research Expertise

Areas of Expertise
Immigrants and schooling
Citizenship and trans/nationalism
Curriculum and pedagogy in international contexts
Literacy and development
Educational development discourse

Professional Biography
Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher began her graduate studies in the field of School Psychology, earning a Professional Diploma in School Psychology and a Masters in the Psychology of Bilingual Students from Fordham University’s Graduate School of Education (New York). As a school psychologist intern, she worked with struggling Indian immigrant students at a public high school in Rockland County, New York. She further developed her interest in immigrant youth during her studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she pursued a doctorate in International Educational Development. At Teachers College, she served as the ethnographer for the Muslim Youth in New York City Project (funded by the Ford Foundation) and was also part of the research team for the African Muslim Immigrants Literacy Initiative (AMILI). She was also a member of the editorial board of Current Issues in Comparative Education for three years.

Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher's work has received national recognition: She was a finalist for the Council on Anthropology and Education's 2008 Outstanding Dissertation Award. Her article on Afghan refugees in Pakistan was a selected reading for the Clinton Global Initiative (2009). In 2010, she was awarded the Council on Anthropology and Education’s Presidential Early Career Fellowship. Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher has developed and taught courses at Drexel University and Teachers College, Columbia University.

Research Interests and Current Projects
Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher's research spans several countries. Within the United States, her research focuses on the educational and socialization experiences of immigrant youth. She has worked specifically with working- and lower-middle-class Pakistani-immigrant youth in New York City, exploring how gender-based expectations, class differences, and age on arrival influence youths’ notions of citizenship and belonging. Along with two colleagues from Teachers COllege, Columbia University, she created an anti-bullying resource pack for educators that targets the bullying of South-Asian American youth "In the Face of Xenophobia: Lessons to Address Bullying of South-Asian Youth". She was also a co-investigator for the SSRC's "Our Shared Past" Grant in which she worked with scholars from six different universities on a curriculum project titled "Rethinking the Region: New Approaches to 9-12 US Curriculum on the "Modern Middle East."


Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher’s other areas of research pertain to issues of educational access, equity and quality, particularly in the context of Pakistan, as well other Muslim majority countries more broadly. Within these contexts, she is especially interested in understanding how educational policies are appropriated at the local level, specifically in terms of policies relating to curriculum and pedagogy. Currently, she is a lead researcher for a comparative study of constructions of citizenship in curricular discourse in Pakistan and Turkey. Relatedly, her practitioner work has focused on teachers professional development in Pakistan. She has worked on "USAID's Pre-STEP project "in Pakistan , which sought to overhaul pre-service teacher education throughout the country.

Dr. Ghaffar-Kucher has presented papers at the Comparative and International Educational Society, the American Anthropological Society, the Penn Ethnography Forum, and the Pakistan Workshop (UK). She has recently finished co-editing a volume (with Lesley Bartlett) titled, "Refugees, Immigrants and Education in the Global South: Lives in Motion" (Routledge).

Courses 2012-13
EDUC 514 Human Development and Basic Education in Developing Countries
EDUC 545 Curriculum and Pedagogy in International Contexts
EDUC 622 International Fieldwork Seminar

Past Courses
EDUC 506 Global perspectives on educational inequalities
EDUC 611 Education, globalization, and development
EDUC 668 Master's research seminar
EDUC 545 Educational development in South Asia
EDUC 545 Race, class and ethnic inequalities in education