Dr Ishrat J Khan is an Associate Professor at the Department of Women and Gender Studies, University of Dhaka, which is the top ranked public research university in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Ishrat has been teaching in this field for more than a decade. She was awarded the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue her doctorate at the University of Sussex in England. Her research investigates the various meanings and manifestations of economic empowerment in the personal and private trajectories of middle-class professional women in Dhaka. It explores the disjuncture between women’s earning potential and its transformation into their agency over choices and decisions in everyday marriage, sexuality, and intimate lives.

Ishrat started her career as a development researcher at ActionAid International. Later, she moved into academia following her degree in Women and Gender Studies which she completed from the University of Hull with an Erasmus Mundus GEMMA scholarship. Her research interests include Gender and Development, Women’s Empowerment, Financial Inclusion, Violence Against Women, and Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). As a feminist academic and researcher, Ishrat collaborated on several gender and development-related projects in Bangladesh and abroad, including Share-Net International, NWO-WOTRO (Dutch Government-funded SRHR research), Equimundo (US-based Mencare Project), UNDP, WHO, and Canterbury University, UK to name a few. Besides her experience as an academic and development professional, Ishrat also worked at Channel I TV as a News Presenter for more than a decade.