Humaira Khan

Biography

After completing my BA at Oxford, I spent one year in Italy at the Johns Hopkins University Bologna Centre, following which I joined the Johns Hopkins University main campus in Maryland, USA and earned a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences from the department of Geography and Environmental Engineering. Then I worked at the University of Maryland at College Park, USA as Assistant Research Scientist modelling the effects of future climate changes on global land cover. But after two years I decided to return to Pakistan. There I first joined the London-based, non-governmental organization LEAD (Leadership in Environment and Development) for a couple of years in their Islamabad office and later worked for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in the northern mountainous region of Gilgit-Baltistan for seven years. During my time with these two organizations, I had the opportunity to delve deeply into the environmental and conservation issues facing developing countries in general and South Asia in particular, and to implement many conservation projects in the field. In this regard, I collaborated with all levels of government officials, the regionally dominant Aga Khan Development Network, local universities and schools, and, importantly, with local communities whose cooperation is crucial for successful conservation outcomes. However, the most enjoyable project of my life so far has been the “primary” school (Class ECD to 5), which I established and ran in the city of Gilgit, northern Pakistan. During this time I learned a great deal about primary education and its particular challenges, and joys, in a developing country. It is still serving pupils of that area. Subsequently I worked as a faculty member at COMSATS University Islamabad, one of the premier universities in South Asia. There I taught Environment and Development to B.S. and M.S. level students and continued my research and publishing on the environmental and development issues of the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan.