Faculty Profile

Chand Mia

Lecturer

Contact Information

  • Office Address: Department of Anthropology, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh
  • Phone: +8801917870702
  • Email: [email protected]

Biography

I currently serve as a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh, while concurrently holding a position as a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada.


My teaching and research interest lies in political and medical anthropology. My core interest is embedded in the examination of how we define citizenship, politics, and the political in human life today. I center on critical anthropological theories to problematize and scrutinize how large-scale sociopolitical and structural forces shape, perpetuate, and normalize inequalities, violence, and repression. Central to my theoretical interests are neoliberalism, governmentality and (eco)biopolitics, necropolitics, citizenship and rights activism, and syndemic and structural violence. The horizons of research include infrastructure development, climate injustice, health policy, and ethnographies of institutions and NGOs. Through rigorous scholarship and scholarly engagement, I aspire to contribute meaningfully to the ongoing discourse within the academic community and beyond.


My two current research projects: one project explores diabetes care inequalities in a rural community in Bangladesh. Focusing on the ethnographic analysis of syndemic inequalities and relational chronicity of diabetes patients in a rural community in Bangladesh, I examine ‘chronic disruption’ as a form of suffering and violence among patients, caregivers, formal and informal health providers, and policymakers. Another project explores the life history of Manta community, a watergypsy fishermen community and is also identical to environmental refugees. In this project, I examine how this community experience the systemic inequalities that make their lives vulnerable. Herein, I frame “biovulnerability” to examine the health and care inequalities of Mantas shaped by the social, ecological, and structural forces, and the political history of marginality.


From 2023 to date, I have been conducting an ethnographic project on state-sponsored infrastructure development in a wetland region in Bangladesh. I seek to examine how a highway infrastructure disrupted the ecological diversity that affected communities in the wetland region. I examine how development promises depoliticize climate security and reproduce false choices, and exacerbate inequalities. Drawing on theoretical debates of anti-politics machine, ecological grief, and the politics of infrastructure, I conceptualize “Schemetopia in the Age of Climatocene” as a departure to understand how state-sponsored development project fails to address inequalities and instead constitute subjectivities, consolidate state power to control over the subjects, and perpetuate inequalities.


In 2024, I conducted a participatory action research project on a southernmost coastal community in Bangladesh. I explored how Cyclone Remal has affected the community along with a focus on the effectiveness of an unconditional cash transfer based on forecast weather to take early actions considering the preparedness. From this research, I am critically reflecting on the historical roots of vulnerabilities, inequalities, and deprivations that this coastal community has experienced. Concentrating on the anthropological theories of 'the right to citizenship' of a disaster-vulnerable coastal community, I propose a new concept, “Prepper Citizenship,” to examine the deeply rooted forces of inequalities and rights of the communities that are subject to and live in a disaster-prone zone. From this ground, my paper, “The ‘Pre-Disaster Citizenship’ in Bangladesh: Risks, Resilience, and Vulnerability in a Disaster-Prone Coastal Community,” has been accepted for an oral presentation at RIMMA2025, International Conference on Forecasting, Preparedness, Warning, and Response – Visualization, Communication and Information Management, to be held in the University of Bern, Switzerland, on 28 – 30 January 2025. Part of this research, I co-authored another paper entitled “Centering Communities in Crisis: Lessons from Culturally Rooted Evaluation in Coastal Bangladesh”, with Shuvo Roy, who is a humanitarian practitioner, which was presented at International Humanitarian Studies Association Conference on Towards Plural Humanitarianisms: Decolonising Theory Through Global-South Perspectives, held from October 15-17, 2025. Also, my recent coauthored works appeared at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropology Association: “Mental Health Matters: Empowering Bangladeshi Public University Students (2024)” and “Maternal care, risks, and violence: Toward an Analysis of Health Inequalities in Bangladesh (2023).” In these two papers, which I authored with my colleagues at SUST, we examined how social arrangements perpetuate health inequities in everyday lives, delving into the anthropological scholarship of structural violence. 

Education

  • PhD Candidate in Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada (September 2021-present)
  • MSS in Anthropology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh, 2018
  • BSS in Anthropology at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet-3114, Bangladesh, 2016

Research Interests

  • Political Anthropology, Medical Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, Infrastructure Politics, Citizenship, Rights Activism, Climate Injustice, Health Inequities

Active Research Project

  • 1. July 2025-June 2026, Principal Investigator, Project: “Therapeutic Culture, Health, and Vulnerabilities: An Ethnographic Study of the Manta Fisherfolk Community in Barishal, Bangladesh”, Funded by University Research Center, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh.
  • 2. Feb 2023-Present, Principal Investigator, Project: “Failed Scheme and the Practice of Politics: The Quest for Climate Security in the Wetland Ecology in Bangladesh”, Funded by Bangladesh Climate Change Trust of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bangladesh.
  • 3. July 2024-June 2025, Principal Investigator, Project: “Living with Diabetes: An Ethnography of Diabetes Care and Management in Rural Bangladesh”, Funded by University Research Center, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh.

Journal Publications

  • 1. Miah, Md Shahgahan, Chand Mia, AFM Zakaria, and Jahid Siraj Chowdhury, and Rabiul Awal Chowdhury. submitted (2024). “Arguing with Dispossession: A Qualitative Study of Tourism and Its Discontents in Gazipur.” Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 23 (5): . (2025)
  • 2. Mia, Chand, Avijit Saha, Saima Mehjabeen, ASM Shahabuddin and Malabika Sarker. Submitted (2024). “The biopolitics of maternal mortality”: A Qualitative study of competence care in the Rohingya refugee community in Bangladesh. Critical Public Health. (2024)
  • 3. Paul, Pranto, AFM Zakaria, and Chand Mia. 2024. “The Hope to Live: Medical Imaginary and the Political Economy of Hope of Lung Cancer Care in Bangladesh.” BMJ Open, 14. (2024)
  • 4. Mia, Chand and Zakaria, AFM. 2022. Activism and political opportunity: Environmental management on the move in Sylhet City. World Futures, 79 (1): 91-112. (2022)
  • 5. Barua, Mrittika, Sayantan Chowdhury, Avijit Saha, Chand Mia, Stenly Hely Sajow and Malabika Sarkar. 2022. “Community-based referral transportation system for accessing emergency obstetric services in the Rohingya refugee camp during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh”. BMC Conflict and Health, 16. (2022)
  • 6. Zakaria, AFM and Chand Mia. 2019. Peoples of the Margin: The Conditions of Burkey Labor in Bholaganj Stone Quarry, Sylhet, Bangladesh. Man and Culture, 4(3): 17-26. (2019)
  • 7. Akhter, Halima, Chand Mia and Salma Akhter. 2018. Understanding the Changes of the Wetland Ecosystem and Its Impact on the Biodiversity of Tanguar Haor in Sunamganj, Bangladesh. Asian Journal of Environment and Ecology, 7(4): 1-11. (2018)

Conference

  • 1. Akhter, Halima, Farida Chowdhury, and Chand Mia. 2024. Mental Health Matters: Empowering Bangladeshi University Students for Academic Excellence. Accepted for oral presentation at the American Anthropology Association 2024 Annual Meeting on Praxis, in November 2024. (2025)
  • 2. Mia, Chand. 2025. ‘Pre-Disaster Citizenship’ in Bangladesh: A Participatory Action Research on Risks, Resilience, and Vulnerability in a Disaster-Prone Coastal Community. Accepted for oral presentation at RIMMA2025, International Conference on Forecasting, Preparedness, Warning, and Response - Visualization, Communication, and Information Management, to be held in Bern, Switzerland on 28 - 30 January 2025. (2025)
  • 3. Islam, Nazibul, Pranto Paul, Chowdhury Anika Farah, Juniya Mili, AFM Zakaria, and Chand Mia. 2025. Structure of Suffering: An Ethnography of Sanitation Insecurity among Poor Urban Women in Sylhet City. Orally presented at the Toilet Conference, organized by WaterAid. (2025)
  • 4. Roy, Shuvo and Chand Mia. 2025. Centering Communities in Crisis: Lessons from Culturally Rooted Evaluation in Coastal Bangladesh. The paper is presented at International Humanitarian Studies Association Conference on Towards Plural Humanitarianisms: Decolonising Theory Through Global-South Perspectives, held from October 15-17, 2025, in Norway. (2025)
  • 5. Miah, Md. Shahgahan and Chand Mia. 2023. “Drug store is a poor people’s hospital”: Medicine transactions and therapeutic practice in Bangladesh. Oral paper presentation at the American Anthropology Association 2023 Annual Meeting on Transitions, Organized by the joint collaboration of American Anthropology Association and Canadian Anthropology Society, in November 2023. (2023)
  • 6. Mia, Chand, Faria Binte Arif, Navila Kawser, Pranto Paul, Javed Kaisar, Ashraful Haque, Tasmia Kaniz Ahmed, and AFM Zakaria. 2023. Maternal care, risks, and violence: Toward an analysis of health inequalities in Bangladesh. Paper accepted for the American Anthropology Association 2023 Annual Meeting on Transitions, Organized by the joint collaboration of American Anthropology Association and Canadian Anthropology Society, in November 2023. (2023)
  • 7. Mia, Chand and AFM Zakaria. 2018. Stone Resources, Competition and Marginalization: The Conditions of Burkey Labor in Stone Quarry. Paper presented at National Seminar on Change, Continuity and the Marginals in Bangladesh, Organized by the Institute of Social Research and Applied Anthropology, Bangladesh. (2018)
  • 8. Mia, Chand and Monjur Ul Haider. 2017. Mourning Monument and Protesting Place: Representation of Shaheed Minar. Paper presented at International Conference on Visual South Asia, Organized by the Department of Anthropology, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and Department of Sociology, South Asian University, Delhi, India. (2017)
  • 9. Mia, Chand, Shahgahan Miah. and AFM Zakaria. 2017. Social Inclusion and Exclusion of Indigenous Peoples: Quota as a Scheme. Paper presented at National Seminar on Social Inclusion and Exclusion of Indigenous People in Bangladesh, Organized by the Institute of Social Research and Applied Anthropology, Bangladesh. (2017)

Teaching

  • Basic Research Methods in Anthropology (235)
  • Political Anthropology (351)
  • Science, Technology, and Culture (Master's)
  • Peasant Studies
  • Migration and Diaspora Studies
  • Culture, Space, and Place

Awards & Recognition

  • 2021-25, Dean's Doctoral Award, Memorial University, Canada
  • 2021-25, SGS Fellowship, Memorial University, Canada
  • 2019, Higher Education Merit Scholarship, Ministry of Education, The Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh
  • 2019, Netrokona Foundation Scholarship, Education Department of Deputy Commissioner's Office, Netrokona
  • 2018, Peter Hoare and Mustaque Rahman Scholarship, Department of Anthropology, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh
  • 2013-16, University Merit Scholarship, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Bangladesh