Bio:
Ali Karimi is an Assistant Professor and Canada Research Chair (Tier II) in the Department of Communication, Media and Film at the University of Calgary. He is a scholar of critical information studies with a focus on surveillance, privacy, and data justice.
Karimi’s current research examines the power politics of how the state produces, organizes, and uses population information. He studies this problem mostly in the context of the weak states of the Global South where data is often contested and information injustice is a major issue—a problem that particularly hurts marginalized groups.
He is currently working on a book about the history of counting in Afghanistan. The book shows how numerical information—or lack thereof—can affect the state, society, and the market at large. Grounded in the intersection of media studies and STS, this project is based on unexamined archival sources from Afghanistan and several other countries and ethnographic fieldwork.
Karimi received his PhD from McGill University, where his research was supported by a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Before joining the University of Calgary, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Advanced Research in Global Communication, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
Inquiries: If you are interested in pursuing graduate studies (MA or PhD) at the University of Calgary’s Department of Communication, Media and Film, feel free to send me an email: ali [dot] karimi1 [at] ucalgary [dot] ca.
Peer-reviewed Articles:
“Shirin’s Petition: An Enslaved Hazara Woman’s Quest for Justice in the Late 19th Century.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, with Masuma Nazari (forthcoming)
“Influencing: Ephemeral Publics in States of Emergency.” American Historical Review, vol. 129, no 2 (2024), pp. 601-608. (PDF)
“Information Control in Afghanistan, 1901-1946.” Afghanistan, vol. 5, no 2 (2022), pp. 172–200. (PDF)
“The Bazaar, the State, and the Struggle for Public Opinion in
Nineteenth-Century Afghanistan.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 30, no. 4 (2020), pp. 613–633. (PDF)
“Surveillance in Weak States: The Problem of Population
Information in Afghanistan.” International Journal of Communication,
vol. 13 (2019), pp. 4778–4794. (PDF)
“Medium of the Oppressed: Folk Music, Forced Migration, and Tactical Media.” Communication, Culture & Critique, vol. 10, no. 4 (2017), pp. 729-745. (PDF)
“Street Fights: The Commodification of Place Names in
Post-Taliban Kabul City.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers, vol. 106, no. 3 (2016), pp. 738-753. (PDF)
Articles in Media (selected):
"On Official Recognition of Afghan Governments" [Persian]. Etelaat Ruz (2024).
“Documenting the Disaster: Recording Personal Observations During the COVID-19 Pandemic” [Persian]. Etelaat Ruz (2020).
“Migratory Experiences of the Hazaras in the Italian Film Sembra mio figlio” [Persian]. BBC Persian (2020).
“Das traditionelle Handwerk Afghanistans” [Traditional Craftsmanship in Afghanistan.] Federal Agency for Civic Education (2012).