Elora Shehabuddin

Hi! I’m Elora Shehabuddin. I’m Professor of Transnational Asian Studies and Core Faculty in the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University.

I was born in Rawalpindi (in what is now Pakistan), to parents from Chittagong (in what is now Bangladesh), some 1500 miles away, at the other end of the Indian subcontinent. With my parents and sisters, I lived in nine countries across South Asia, the Arab World, and eastern and western Europe, and visited many more before I first came to the United States to attend college. I like to think that all these different experiences have made me who I am and have shaped how I see the world and people, and, of course, my teaching, research, and writing. I studied Social Studies at Harvard-Radcliffe and Politics at Princeton. I live in Houston with my husband, children, and the goofy, eternally-a-puppy, Lily.

I loved writing (and even briefly working) for newspapers growing up but realized at some point both that I’m not good with those short deadlines and that I really enjoy doing research as an academic. I've come to cherish opportunities to convey that research to broader audiences as well as to my colleagues and students. I do that in public lectures and, most explicitly, in my new book about which I’m really quite excited, Sisters in the Mirror.