Abdul Aijaz, Ph.D.

Human Geography | Environmental Humanities | Water Politics

I am a scholar of environmental humanities and human geography whose research examines the politics and poetics of water, environmental commons, and socio-ecological transformation in South Asia, with particular attention to the Indus Basin.

Methodologically, I weave together ethnographic fieldwork, archival inquiry, and literary analysis to trace the entwined transformations of socio-ecological landscapes and their narrative representations. Theoretically, my work interrogates the presumed opposition between fact and fiction, insisting instead on the ontological implications of our world-making stories.

My engagement with the politics of water is deeply rooted in the landscape of my own formation. As rivers were disciplined and rechanneled into modern canal systems, the region’s pastoralists—including my own grandfather’s family of pastoral camel-herders—were compelled to settle as peasant-proprietors in newly established canal colony villages. Today, some of these communities find themselves mobilizing their pastoral inheritances anew, responding to the dual pressures of uneven distribution of the natural commons and escalating environmental crisis.

Current Position
Visiting Assistant Professor, Indiana University Bloomington

Research Interests

• Water Politics
• Political Ecology
• Environmental Humanities
• Hydrosocial Systems
• South Asian Environmental History