Owasim Akram

About Owasim Akram

With a tertiary level of education in the discipline of International Relations along with post graduate diploma in International Development Studies Dr. Akram is currently working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Political Science. Prior to this, he completed his PhD in Political Science at the same University. His doctoral research was supported by the Marie Skłodowska Curie Action of the European Commission and explored the lived experience of ageing in extreme poverty in Bangladesh. Mr. Akram has a broad-based research, evaluation, policy and program management exposure in the field of development with expertise in extreme poverty, socio-economic resilience, social protection, food and livelihoods insecurity. Prior to working for the University, he had an enriching career as a development practitioner with exposure to work for organisation like European Union, Oxfam GB, ADD International, Plan International, BRAC and so on holding different strategic positions from mid to senior level.

He was awarded the 'Emerging Scholar Award' by the Aging and Social Change Network at the Aging & Social Change: Eleventh Interdisciplinary Conference held in Vancouver, Canada; 23-24 September 2021. He has also served as a Visiting Researcher at the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing at the University of Oxford and at the Department of Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath in the UK. He is affiliated with the Swedish National Graduate School for Competitive Science on Ageing and Health (SWEAH), an initiative of Lund University and funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Dr. Akram is currently leading a study supported by the Expert Group for Aid Studies (EBA), Sweden which aims to increase the understanding of the drivers behind and experiences of extreme poverty and marginalisation among ethnic and religious minorities in Bangladesh in collaboration with senior academics and researchers from the University of Bath and Lund University.

Dr. Akram has also been awarded a three-year international development postdoc grant by the Swedish Research Council (VR). With a decolonial lens, he is critically looking at how development (both at the level of knowledge and practice), produces ‘epistemic injustice’ by neglecting the voices of the severe poor. As part of his postdoc, he will also be based at the University of Bath, UK and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS).

Dr. Akram has published a range of book chapters and articles in different international journals like Development Policy Review, European Journal of Development Research, International Journal of Qualitative Methods and so on. He is also an Editorial College Member of the Journal of Global Ageing (A New Journal of the British Society of Gerontology and Policy Press).

His research and teaching interests are in the following areas:

• International Development
• Development Management and Governance of Social Protection
• Extreme Poverty
• Social Policy
• Welfare/Wellbeing
• Global Justice
• Social Citizenship
• Ageing/Social Gerontology
• Postcolonial Theory
• Research Ethics
• Qualitative Methods