I am a PhD Candidate in Political Science at MIT and a Graduate Research Fellow at the MIT Gov/Lab. I study political values, environmental politics and the political economy of state-civil society relations. 

My dissertation project, “Values and Environmental Stewardship: Reclaiming an Environmental Ethic for the Climate Movement”, studies mobilization on climate change that emphasizes political values, such as the values of care and justice implicit in the notion of environmental stewardship. 

Building on fieldwork in three church-affiliated grassroots environmental groups, I show how values-based mobilization is distinct from related phenomena in the literature (such as ideology and framing), and why this matters. Using survey experiments and analytical vignettes, I illustrate the potential of values-based reasoning to address the problems of (i) indifference and (ii) political polarization in the environmental movement in the US.  A related strand of research focuses on the political economy of environmental governance, especially how state and civil society groups interact to improve environmental governance. 

My research has been generously supported by the MIT Gov/Lab and the MIT Political Experiments Research Lab (PERL). I hold a Masters in Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK, and a Bachelors in Economics from the Lahore University of Management Sciences, Pakistan. I am originally from Lahore, Pakistan.