Mahnaz Shujrah

Mahnaz Shujrah is a Research Assistant working with Research Fellow Maryam S. Khan on the Constitutional History Project at IDEAS. She graduated in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in Management Sciences and a minor in History from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS).

For her independent study at LUMS, she chose a history project under the supervision of Professor Nadhra S. N. Khan, who specializes in the history of art and architecture during the Mughal, Sikh and colonial periods. The study focused on perceptions of royal women in the 16^th century Mughal court, and foregrounded the persistence in contemporary times of orientalist representations of the Mughal harem in European archival sources.  

Mahnaz’s primary research focus relates to the oral history of women constitution-makers in Pakistan as part of the Constitutional History Project. In addition, she is working on the theme of child marriage in Pakistan, and has published an article and a podcast on the subject in the context of a five-year research project at IDEAS on ‘Sustaining Power: Women’s Struggles against contemporary backlash in South Asia’ (SuPWR), to study the re-strategizing of women’s struggles and movements against backlash.