Ather Zia’s book “Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir” has won the Public Anthropologist Award 2021.
Public Anthropologist Award is given to an anthropologist who has published an outstanding contribution that follows these topics: violence, war, poverty, social movements, freedom, aid, rights, injustice, inequality, social exclusion, racism, health, and environmental challenges.
Ather Zia is a poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Gender Studies program at the University of Northern Colorado Greeley. She holds a doctorate in Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine.
Her research scrutinizes the Indian military occupation, settler colonialism, and women’s collective political and social challenges in Kashmir.
She is the founder-editor of Kashmir Lit, an online journal of Kashmiri and Diaspora writing and is the co-founder of Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars working on the Kashmir region.
Her book details the effects of military occupation and political dispute of two countries India and Pakistan on everyday life of a Kashmiri and the book focuses on the scenario of Kashmir from the past years which includes enforced disappearances and tells the story of Kashmir through women and women activism in the struggle.
Her book “Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir has also won the Gloria Anzaldua Honorable Mention award 2020.