OPP Studentship Holders

Maliha Abidi is a Pakistani-American multidisciplinary artist, author and speaker based in London whose practice spans painting, animation, immersive installation and publishing. Drawing on her experience of migration from Karachi to California at 14, her work examines identity, collective memory and gender through a feminist lens.

She is the founder of Women Rise, an initiative for women's rights and girls' education, and BackPackX, a spatial computing platform for storytelling in underserved communities. Her work has been exhibited at Outernet London, Frameless Gallery, and Tate Modern, and featured in the New York Times, Forbes, BBC and Good Morning America. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the Royal College of Art, and is completing her MFA at the Ruskin School of Art.

Sameh Hameedi is a doctoral candidate at the Mathematical Institute, Oxford, working at the intersection of mathematical physics, nonlinear partial differential equations and stochastic analysis. A core focus of his research is the homogenisation of complex systems — producing tractable mathematical descriptions of systems with multiple scales and degrees of freedom — with relevance to fields spanning artificial intelligence and quantum field theory.

He holds a BEng with First Class Honours in Mechanical Engineering from University College London and an MSc in Applied Mathematics from Columbia University. He previously worked at Bridgewater Associates before returning to academia. Born and raised in Karachi, he hopes to open the field to more Pakistani students in the mathematical sciences.

Abdul Wahid Khan is from Chitral, northern Pakistan. He completed his MSc in Nature, Society and Environmental Governance at Oxford, then continued as a DPhil candidate researching the commons, pastoralism and climate change in mountain communities through a Rural Political Ecology framework. His work advances a "more-than-human rights" approach to commons governance, drawing on local spiritual, cultural and ecological knowledge in Chitral that challenges dominant land-use narratives.

He is the founder of the Chitral Academics Circle and the Oxford Collective for Pastoralist and Nomadic Peoples, and serves on the Global Secretariat for the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists 2026. His research on the transformation of pastoral livelihoods in Yarkhun Valley has been published in Nomadic Peoples and the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences.

Ajmal Hussain Mughal is a faculty member in the Musicology Department at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore — the first such department in Pakistan — where he graduated as a first-batch student in 2005. Having completed his MSt in Music at Oxford with NCA funding, he continued to a DPhil at Linacre College, making him the first Pakistani to pursue a doctorate in music at Oxford.

His dissertation examines the narratives of decline and advancement in Pakistan's art music: how the past, present and future are configured in Pakistani musical experience, and what those narratives reveal about value, identity and possibility. He intends to use his qualification to establish the first doctoral programme in musicology in Pakistan at the NCA, meeting the Higher Education Commission requirement for PhD supervisors.

Jahanzaib Nowsherwan is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chemistry working under the supervision of Professor John McGrady. His research covers two areas: computational investigations of gas-phase clusters (including CrSn, CrGe, ZnSn and Cu-Pb systems) with the aim of understanding their electronic properties and applications; and the chemistry of cyclic polyantimony units, investigating novel structures formed by iron, niobium and ruthenium with cyclic antimony atoms.

He successfully defended his first-year viva, has two projects in preparation for publication, and completed his confirmation of status. The OPP studentship supported him through his final writing-up period, enabling him to complete and defend his thesis without financial interruption.

Nazakat Ali completed his DPhil in the field of chemo-biocatalysis — a discipline that combines chemical and biological processes to develop sustainable methods for chemical transformation, with direct relevance to addressing future energy challenges. His doctoral work yielded new methodologies with lasting impact on the field, and he participated in international conferences and academic workshops throughout his programme.

Following Oxford, he took on a research-oriented academic role in Pakistan and plans to support government policy-making in higher education, mentoring the next generation of scientists and engineers tackling the country's energy sector challenges.

Nimra Yousaf's research at Oxford used randomised controlled trials and the Prolific survey platform to study how the framing of flood risk maps affects risk perception and willingness-to-pay in the United Kingdom and Pakistan. The OPP studentship enabled her to roughly double her survey sample from 200 to over 400 participants, significantly strengthening the statistical robustness of her findings.

Her research also contributed to covering her final months of accommodation at Oxford, removing financial stress during the most intensive period of her analysis and write-up. Her work has been published in the Journal of Flood Risk Management.

Adeel Hussain is a British Pakistani international trade professional on sabbatical from the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT), where his portfolio covers inward investment from space, aerospace, defence and automotive sectors. He was part of the founding team of the British Office for Investment, a cross-government initiative spanning DBT, HM Treasury and Number 10 Downing Street.

The Diplomatic Studies Programme at Oxford, originally established by the UK Foreign Office, hosted a cohort of 32 participants from 23 countries, of which he was one of three British nationals. His MSt dissertation was supported by the Dunya Foundation. He is the first in his family to hold a postgraduate degree, and hopes to pursue a career in the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on completing his studies.

Aleena Khan was born and raised in Lahore and Dir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and graduated with distinction in Anthropology and Sociology from LUMS, where she served as President of the Journalism Society and was active in the Feminist Society. Her academic work examines gender in Pakistan, with a particular focus on patriarchal norms, women's education and the societal response to feminist movements.

At Oxford her MSc research used qualitative fieldwork and digital ethnography rooted in Lower Dir, KPK, to study how online social norms translate into real-world consequences for women in the region. She aims to contribute to social policies promoting women's upward mobility in rural Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Muhammad Tasmir Aziz completed his degree at Kellogg College, Oxford. The OPP studentship covered outstanding rent owed to the College and cleared loans he had taken to meet settling-in and accommodation costs during his time at Oxford, enabling him to close out his degree without continuing financial pressure.

He expressed the hope that his experience would reassure prospective Pakistani scholars that pursuing study at Oxford is a worthwhile endeavour, regardless of financial constraints — and that support exists for those who reach Oxford but face difficulty sustaining themselves through to completion.

Ali Ahmed completed an MPhil in Development Studies at Oxford, researching how mental health needs of Syrian refugees are conceptualised and how humanitarian organisations respond to them in the Lebanese context. Before Oxford, he taught political science, economics and sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and has worked with disadvantaged youth in the criminal justice system in New York and with elderly at-risk populations in the Netherlands.

The OPP studentship covered his remaining living costs at Oxford and extended his fieldwork stay in Beirut over the summer, enabling a more comprehensive exploration of his research site. He hopes to apply the lessons of this work to better understand mental health dynamics within Pakistan.

Amna Hassan worked part-time across time zones throughout most of her degree to cover living costs without relying on family support. The demands of balancing paid work alongside a full academic load — coursework, a dissertation and adaptation to a new environment — placed sustained pressure on her capacity to focus on her studies.

The OPP studentship enabled her to stop working during her final term, freeing her to concentrate fully on her dissertation and examinations. She submitted her dissertation on time and completed her final exams with confidence. She described the studentship as transformative in allowing her to finish at the standard her work warranted.

Rehab Shaikh holds a BSc in International Social and Public Policy with Politics from the London School of Economics and an MSc in Modern South Asian Studies from Oxford. She has worked as a civil servant at the UK Ministry of Justice, focusing on policy evaluation in the Youth Justice and Vulnerable Offenders Department, and as a consultant at The Social Innovation Partnership and Blood Cancer UK.

Her interests span health policy, access to clinical trials for Pakistani communities, and microfinance in Sindh. Originally from Hyderabad and raised in Karachi and Dubai, she intends to return to Pakistan to continue working within government and to expand her microfinance and impact-evaluation projects.