Ms Ishrat Hossain

Areas of expertise

Conflict, Civil War, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Relations Theory, Myanmar, Bangladesh

Academic Profile

Ishrat is a Commonwealth Scholar (2016) pursuing her DPhil in International Relations as a member of Linacre College. Her research explores transnational dynamics of violence in the borderlands areas focusing on the Bangladesh-Myanmar border. She is particularly interested in communal violence, especially among the Buddhist and Muslim population in South Asia.

Before starting her DPhil at Oxford, Ishrat worked as a public information expert and political analyst. Most recently she was the Head of New Media at UNDP Bangladesh's Country Office. Prior to joining UNDP, Ishrat worked briefly as the Political Advisor to the German ambassador in Bangladesh. She has also worked for a number of development organisations and diplomatic missions in Bangladesh starting her career as the Communications officer of the joint communications unit of British High Commission and DFID in 2009.

She received her BA and MA degree in Literature from University of Dhaka and a second MA in International Relations from the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra where she was an Endeavour scholar. She graduated with first-class honours from ANU in 2013 and wrote an award-winning thesis on Burmese foreign policy restructuring  and its impact on Bangladesh-Myanmar relations.

Languages

English, Bengali, Hindi, Urdu

Awards

Publications

Farrelly, N and Hossain, I (2014); From Bangladesh: Considering Another Side of the Rakhine Conflict in Nick Cheesman and Htoo Kyaw Win (Ed.)Communal Violence in Myanmar, MKS Publishing, Yangon