About
Nida Zehra is a writer and PhD candidate in Human Geography and Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where she collaborates closely with Pakistan-based grassroots organizations to research the Political Ecology of Caste and British colonial hydraulic infrastructure and its contemporary effects on unequal climate migration in Sindh, Pakistan.
Nida regularly engages with the academic impact of her research through organizing and participating in conference panels such as POLLEN and the Annual South Asia Conference at UW-Madison. She is especially interested in collaborating across the interdisciplinary domains of political ecology, urban studies, race and racialization, postcolonialism, infrastructural studies and caste studies.
Building on her international experience in UN policy research, community organizing, public advocacy, and the NGO sector, she serves as the Lead Knowledge Specialist at the Beyond Climate Collaborative where her advocacy and research work as the head of the Knowledge & Resources team makes the ground-truths of climate (im)mobility justice widespread and accessible, challenging epistemic and material injustices. She holds an MSc in Environment, Politics and Development from SOAS University of London and a BA in Politics & International Relations from Queen Mary University of London.
Research interests
- Caste
- (Hydraulic) Infrastructural studies
- Migration
- South Asia
- Climate change
Provisional thesis title
“Tracing Climate (Im)mobilities: The Interplay of Caste and Colonial Legacies in Sindh’s Irrigated Geographies”
Conference papers
“Racialised Land and Bonded Labour – Colonial Legacies, Caste and the (Im)mobilities of debt in Sindh, Pakistan” – POLLEN 2026. https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/pollen2026/paper/94145
“Legal and epistemic violence in environmental-related dispossession and displacement amongst Indigenous communities: case studies from North America” – Environmental and Climate Mobilities Network (ECMN) 2026.
Publications
Alvez, G., Grant, L., Zehra, N., Lakhani, A. (2026) “A Thery of Climate Mobility Justice: Interrogating Climate Mobility Regimes within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change” in Climate Change, Migration, Gender and the Law. Edward Elgar: Cheltenham.
Zehra, Nida (2026) “Planned Relocation”; “Climate and Environmental-related Evictions, Dispossession and Displacement” in Essential Concepts of Human Rights and the Environment. Routledge: Oxford.
Non-academic publishing
Khausa: A Story of Migration from Burma to Karachi
Scholarships/funding
LSE PhD Studentship
Affiliations/memberships
IG on Climate Change and Migration
RGS Dev Geogs Arts-based Methodologies Network
Positions held
Lead Knowledge Specialist at the Beyond Climate Collaborative (BCC)
Supervisors
Prof Kasia Paprocki
Prof Austin Zeiderman