Dr. Daanish Mustafa

Daanish Mustafa grew up in Muzaffarabad, Quetta, Bannu, Kharian, Abbottabad, Rawalpindi and Lahore. After receiving his HSC certificate from Aitchison College Lahore he went for an undergraduate degree at Middlebury Collge in Vermont. At Middlebury, Daanish majored in Geography with a minor in Russian literature in translation. He returned to Pakistan upon completing his BA degree and worked for two years as a development consultant working with various international donors on environment and development related projects.

In 1993 Daanish went to University of Hawaii at Manoa where he received his MA in Geography in 1995. He did his Ph.D. research at University of Colorado, Boulder, where his dissertation research was on irrigation and flood management in Central Punjab. He taught briefly at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, USA and is at present an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL, USA.

Dr. Mustafa has many publications in the top scholarly journals, on irrigation and flood related issues in Pakistan. His most recent publications have been on geographical aspects of terrorism, social capital in Pakistan and Karez irrigation in Balochistan Pakistan. In the summer of 2005 he diversified his regional focus to include a study of privatization of water distribution system in Belize, Central America.

Throughout his academic career Dr. Mustafa has been interested in analyzing environment and development related issues, particularly with regard to water, from a radical social theoretical perspective. He firmly maintains that resource management is a social practice and understanding of the social and political structures governing resource management is the key to encouraging socially and ecologically sustainable development.

Dr. Mustafa has received awards from the National Geographic Society, United States National Science Foundation, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency for his various research projects.

Dr. Daanish Mustafa is now teaching at king's College London, Department of Geography.