Alumna Spotlight: Salwa Hoque

Salwa Hoque

Current position: Director, Majority World Initiative, and Resident Fellow (Postdoctoral Research Scholar), at the Information Society Project, Yale Law School

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, NYU

Graduating Class: 2017

Thesis: “The Complexities of Secularism in Bangladesh”

People often ask me: “Why South Asia Studies? How is that useful? What career can you have with this degree?” These questions were particularly challenging when I had to explain my choice to pursue this line of study prior to joining the program. The answers to such questions are not simple.    I grew up in Bangladesh, a postcolonial state, and my education was from an English-medium school that followed the U.K. curriculum. When I moved to the U.S. for my undergraduate education, I majored in two disciplines that were influenced by Euro-America-centric theories and practices: English and Communication. During that time, I conducted research and wrote about non-Western sites, while struggling to understand how a theory that emerged from Western epistemic frameworks situated within a particular history, culture, and space could be replicated so easily onto another site with a different context and moral order. Yet, those were the only theories I was taught and had knowledge of. There was conflict in the way I viewed and experienced the world and the theoretical toolbox I had to understand and explain it. I realized that I had to work towards decolonizing my mind in order to make sense of my experiences as well as the experiences of those around me. That is why I chose to pursue an M.A. in South Asia Studies at Columbia University.

Working with leading scholars of South Asia at Columbia University helped me learn new ways of approaching the same theories I had learned before – that is, I learned how to decenter theory from Euro-America-centric standpoints and note how they can still be used in my context. I learned how theories develop through exchange and are co-produced by various sites and schools of thought. I also learned about the theories and philosophies that emerged from South Asia and noted how current scholars approach and develop them today. I set out on a personal journey to find new frameworks to broaden my theoretical toolbox, and I left with so much more. The engagement with faculty and peers at Columbia University sparked new questions and curiosities, leading me to view my homeland, identity, and thinking in new ways. I was idyllically left with more questions than answers, leading me to pursue a Ph.D. in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University (NYU) and find my calling in academia.

A key component of the South Asia Studies program is its interdisciplinary format. My M.A. thesis explored how the meaning(s) and development of secularism in Bangladesh is complex and explained why “secularism” cannot be treated as a universal category – both in theory and in praxis. I had the opportunity to pursue my research questions from across different schools and disciplines at Columbia University. I took courses in Anthropology, History, Political Theory, and Religion to develop my thesis and learned how to think through different fields and speak across diverse audiences. The interdisciplinary component of my M.A. helped me enter and adapt to the fields of digital media studies and legal anthropology for my doctoral studies despite not having any prior background. My doctoral dissertation – Digitizing Law: Data and Justice in the Global South – unsettles the assumption that digitizing law will improve the implementation of justice, despite its current global popularity. Drawing on the concept of legal pluralism, I conduct a comparative analysis of Bangladesh’s urban “secular” state courts and rural “Islamic” or “customary” non-state courts (shalish) to note the different ways alternate frames of justice and lived experiences of law are erased and distorted when the state, private tech companies, and law firms construct digital legal databases. This work, supported by the Mellon–SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship, American Institute of Bangladesh Studies, and multiple fellowships from NYU, contributes new insight(s) on how such exclusions can result in unjust and prejudiced verdicts (by humans and machines) against marginalized communities, particularly rural women in Bangladesh. I conceptualize the term – neocolonial digitality – to note how the digitizing process reinscribes historical forms of discrimination that disproportionately harm marginalized communities, while also generating newer forms of hierarchies and exclusions. Awards for my research include winning the Society for the History of Technology’s Robinson Prize as well as the NYU Research and Showcase Competition. I also received the Best Graduate Student Paper award by the peer-reviewed journal Asian Journal of Law and Society, where it has been published: “Neocolonial Digitality: Analyzing Digital Legal Databases Using Legal Pluralism” : https://doi.org/10.1017/als.2023.9

Having been trained in interdisciplinary research for the first time during my M.A. program, I learned how to expand my place in academia and engage in fields that are generally deemed to hold rigid disciplinary boundaries such as Anthropology, Law, and Computer Science. I’m currently a Fellow at the Information Society Project (ISP) at Yale Law School and the Director of ISP’s Majority World Initiative. The spirit of South Asia Studies at Columbia University has stayed with me throughout my different roles in academia – that is, I continue to work towards including and centering on marginalized communities’ standpoints from Bangladesh in my academic research, teaching, services, and activism.

The style and structure of my research, the scope of my role in academia, and how I understand the world are influenced by what I learned during my time at Columbia University. I will forever be grateful to my mentors – Professors Sudipta Kaviraj, Anupama Rao, Allison Busch, and Katherine Ewing – for helping me develop critical thinking, for encouraging me to pursue interesting and difficult questions, supporting my curiosity, and for believing in me and my project. The words and encouragement of Professor Busch remain etched within me: “Only one class, one reading, or one conversation can change how you think about the world and what your future will be.”