Biography
Uzma Z. Rizvi is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Urban Studies at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York; and Visiting Researcher in the Department of International Studies at the American University of Sharjah. Rizvi’s research focuses on decolonizing archaeology, ancient urbanism, critical heritage studies, memory and war/trauma studies and the postcolonial critique. Since receiving her doctorate from the Department of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania (2007), Rizvi has been Faculty Fellow and Chair for the Initiative on Art, Community Development and Social Change at the Pratt Center and a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University (2008). Rizvi’s research has been supported by Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship, the George Dales Foundation and the American Institute of Pakistan Studies, among others.
Rizvi has been a lead tutor (with Murtaza Vali) of, Campus Art Dubai (2014 – present) and directed (with Amal Khalaf) Global Art Forum: The Future Was, Art Dubai (2016) , . She is a regular contributor and one of the minds on, Anthrodendum (formerly Savage Minds savageminds.org) and the series editor for Springer Briefs’ , Decolonizing Archaeology and Heritage. Her writing can be found in magazines such as TANK, The New Inquiry and LEAP, and in recent scholarly publications that include, ‘Critical Heritage and Participatory Discourses in the UAE’ (2018); ‘Decolonization as Care’ (2016); ‘Crafting Resonance: Empathy and Belonging in Ancient Rajasthan’ (2015); ‘Decolonizing Archaeology: On the Global Heritage of Epistemic Laziness,’ (2015) and The World Archaeological Congress Research Handbook on Postcolonial Archaeology (2010).
She earned a Bachelor of Art in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology from Bryn Mawr College (1995) and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania (2007).
Born in 1973, she currently lives between New York and Sharjah.
