Heer Cheema

Biography

Heer Cheema is a 2022 History graduate from the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). She graduated with High Distinction and was also awarded the NMF Gold Medal in History. During her undergraduate, she became deeply invested in histories of state violence. This interest culminated in her undergraduate thesis which explores how the surveillance regime in Colonial Punjab facilitated violent state action against peaceful dissidents. She was a founding member of the LUMS Historical Society and a part of the editorial board that launched the Feminist Society’s first e-publication. She is currently working with the LUMS Digital Archive. Her commitment to each of these initiatives has been driven by her broader commitment to spaces of dissent, which foreground voices and histories that have been systematically oppressed. Through public history initiatives and her research, Heer has worked to advance the discourse around the historical structures that continue to, in our postcolonial moment, enable the excessive use of force by the state and strip certain groups of their political and legal rights. At Oxford, she hopes to continue this work by exploring the role surveillance agencies and the law have historically played in enabling and legitimising state violence.