Congratulations to Dr. Sanaa Alimia (Associate Professor, Aga Khan University) for receiving the 2025 AIPS Book Prize! Her book, Refugee Cities: How Afghans Changed Urban Pakistan, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press, was the committee’s unanimous choice for this award given its enormous contribution to Pakistan Studies.
As noted by the AIPS Book Prize Committee, this book “explores the life of Afghan refugees in Pakistan with a specific focus upon their contributions to the development of Karachi and Peshawar. The work, both a history and eight-year ethnographic study, outlines how waves of Afghan refugee fled to Pakistan to escape violence. As they settled into the peripheries of urban centers, they created their own communities and with their labor contributed greatly to the overall development of Pakistan’s cities. The extent of their contributions and the precarity of their existence within Pakistan is explored in detail.”
They went on to remark that “Alimia’s scholarship is excellent. The book is well-written and easy to read. It draws upon hundreds of interviews and extensive archival research.”
*This award is funded by AIPS unrestricted funds and is not supported by United States federal grant funds.
Honorable Mentions (equally ranked)
Ijlal Naqvi, Access to Power: Electricity and the Infrastructural State in Pakistan (Oxford University Press, 2022)
Omer Aijazi, Atmospheric Violence: Disaster and Repair in Kashmir (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2024)
Nadia Agha, Kinship, Patriarchal Structure and Women’s Bargaining with Patriarchy in Rural Sindh, Pakistan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)