Umair Javed is an Associate Professor at the Mushtaq Gurmani School of Humanities and Social Sciences (MGSHSS). He joined LUMS in 2018 after completing his PhD at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
His research studies the politics of urban development and the informal economy in Pakistan, as well as forms of non-state and informal welfare across a range of contemporary Muslim societies . His work has been published in Studies in Comparative International Development, Development and Change, Antipode, IDS Bulletin, Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, and Economic and Political Weekly. He has also authored book chapters on Pakistan's political economy in edited volumes published by Cambridge University Press, Palgrave MacMillan, and Routledge. At LUMS, Dr Javed teaches courses in political economy, sociology, and international development. Outside of academia, he contributes a fortnightly political and social affairs column for Pakistan's leading English-language daily, Dawn.
His ongoing research includes 1) a book manuscript, drawing on his doctoral research, on the politics of informality in Pakistani bazaars; 2) a study of social transformation and differentiated citizenship in urban village settlements engulfed by high-income residential developments in Lahore; and 3) a survey-based assessment of informal social protection and zakat in Pakistan, with colleagues based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS, Sussex) and the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD).
Gallien, M.; Javed, U., and van den Boogaard, V., Zakat, Non-State Welfare Provision and Redistribution in Times of Crisis: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic (Accepted - Studies in Comparative International Development). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12116-024-09447-x
Javed, U. (2024). The Rise and Fall of Imran Khan. Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, 8(1), pp 32-60
Gallien, M. Javed, U., Mohmand, S.K., and van den Boogard, V., (2023) Vaccine Hesitancy Among Informal Workers: Gendered Geographies of Informality in Lahore, Development and Change, 54(6), 1504-1527. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12807
Sajjad, F., & Javed, U. (2022). Democracy, Legitimacy, and Mega-Project Politics: The Evolution of Lahore s First BRT Corridor. Antipode, 54(5), 1497-1518. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12829.
Javed, U. (2015). Associational Politics in Punjab. Economic and Political Weekly, 49(26-27), 53-54.
Araujo, S., Afzal, W., Chopra, D., Gallien, M., Javed, U., Khan, S., Mohmand, S.K., Qureshi, M.N., Sohail, S. and van den Boogaard, V., (2022). The Distances that the Covid-19 Pandemic Magnified: Research on Informality and the State. IDS Bulletin, 53(3), 111-128. https://doi.org/10.19088/1968-2022.129.
Javed, U. (2018). The Struggle for Control of Pakistan s Fragile Democracy. Current History, 117(798), 123-127. https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2018.117.798.123
Javed, U. (2015). Associational Politics in Punjab. Economic and Political Weekly, 49(26-27), 53-54
Javed, U. (2012) "Of Patrons and Elections", Economic and Political Weekly, 47(32), pp. 7-8.
Javed, U. (2019). Continuity and Change in Naya Pakistan: Contemporary Populism and the 2018 General Election. Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy, 2(4), 81-105.
Negotiating Informality: Bazaars and the State in Urban Pakistan (book manuscript)
Javed, U. (2022) "Following the Prophet s Sunnah: Class, Piety, and Power in a Pakistani Bazaar", in S. Radhakrishnan and G. Vijayakumar (eds) Sociology of South Asia: Postcolonial Legacies, Global Imaginaries. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 323-350. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97030-7_12
Javed, U. (2017). Profit, Power, and Protest: Bazaar Traders in Urban Pakistan. In A. Pande (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Pakistan. New York, NY: Routledge, pp. 148-159.
Javed, U. (2019) "Ascending the Power Structure: Bazaar Traders in Urban Punjab", in M. McCartney and S.A. Zaidi (eds) New Perspectives on Pakistan s Political Economy: State, Class and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (South Asia in the Social Sciences), pp. 199-215. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108761154.011.
Javed, U., & Nabi, I. (2018). Heterogeneous fragility: The case of Pakistan. International Growth Center: LSE-Oxford Commission on State Fragility, Growth and Development
"The politics and practice of zakat in contemporary Pakistan" - Development Studies Association (DSA) Annual Meeting, London, UK. June 2024
"Informality and the Working City: Practices of Regulation of Labour in the Informal Economy". Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Asia Conference, Bangkok, Thailand. July 2019.
"Demanding Power, Evading Empowerment: Contentious Politics and Electricity Provision in Pakistan" - Pathway to Development Conference, LUMS, Pakistan. December 2022
"Between God, people, and the state: Citizen conceptions of Zakat" - Development Studies Association (DSA) Annual Conference 2021 (online)
"Between God, people, and the state: Citizen conceptions of Zakat" - Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Annual Conference 2021 (online)
"Between God, people, and the state: Citizen conceptions of Zakat" - American Political Science Association (APSA) Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. September 2022.
"Gated Out/Cordoned Off: Urban Villages, Infrastructure Transformations, and Socio-Spatial Citizenship in Lahore" - RC 21 Annual Conference, International Sociological Association (ISA), Santiago, Chile. July 2024
Gallien, M.; Javed, U. and van den Boogaard, V. (2023) Zakat, Non-State Welfare Provision and Redistribution in Times of Crisis: Evidence from the Covid-19 Pandemic, ICTD Working Paper 163, https://doi.org/10.19088/ICTD.2023.0212
Javed, U. (2021) Demanding Power: Contentious Politics and Electricity in Pakistan, IDS Working Paper 551, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, https://doi.org/10.19088/IDS.2021.047
Gated Out/Cordoned Off: Urban Villages, Infrastructure Transformations, and Socio-Spatial Citizenship in Lahore, Pakistan (w/ Fizzah Sajjad)
Gallien, M.; Javed, U. and van den Boogaard, V. (2023) "Between God, the People, and the State: Citizen Conceptions of Zakat", ICTD Working Paper 167, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, https://doi.org/10.19088/ICTD.2023.027
The politics and practice of zakat in contemporary Pakistan: Implications for gender, equity and wealth taxes (w/ Max Gallien, Vanessa Van Den Boogard)
Hosain, N. with Javed, U. et al. (2018). Energy Protests in Fragile Settings: The Unruly Politics of Provisions in Egypt, Myanmar, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe, 2007-2017.IDS Working Paper, 2018 (513), 1-42. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/handle/20.500.12413/13808