Afshan Jafar

Afshan Jafar’s research and teaching interests include globalization, transnational women's movements, the Muslim diaspora, gender, media, and the body. Professor Jafar regularly teaches, Introduction to Sociology; Gender, Culture, and the Body; Sex Gender, and Society; Sociology of Globalization. 

Professor Jafar was the 2021 recipient of the Helen B. Regan Faculty Leadership Award. The award recognizes “faculty members who exemplify the College's commitment to shared governance, democratic process and campus community development.” She was the 2015 recipient of the Feminist Activism Award presented by Sociologists for Women in Society. She was also the 2014 recipient of the the Helen Mulvey Faculty Award at Connecticut College presented to an assistant professor who “regularly offers classes that challenge students to work harder than they thought they could and to reach unanticipated levels of academic achievement”.

She is the author of “Women’s NGOs in Pakistan” (2011) and the co-editor of (with Erynn Masi de Casanova) of "Global Beauty, Local Bodies" (2013) and "Bodies Without Borders" (2013). Her scholarship has appeared in Teaching Sociology, Gender & Society, Social Problems, Academe, and Gender Issues. Her public scholarship has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, LA Review of Books, Inside Higher Ed, and Ms. Magazine, among others.

Visit the sociology department website.

Major in Sociology.