I'm Nahal, a Lecturer in TV/Cross-media at University of Amsterdams Media Department teaching the BA program in Media & Culture. Originally from Lahore, Pakistan, I'm based in The Netherlands since 2012. I've been teaching here since 2023 and before that completed my Research MA in Media at the department, focusing on issues of racial and gendered identity representation in cinema and TV mainly across South Asia. Before my MA, I completed a BA in Liberal Arts & Sciences from University College Maastricht with a focus on Sociology and Cultural Studies.

I'm completing the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) - a nationally recognized certificate that demonstrates a lecturer's didactic competencies in higher education.

My research centres on the making and unmaking of identity in film and television, with a particular focus on South Asian and African American contexts. I examine how media forms both construct and challenge narratives of belonging, race, gender, and cultural memory, drawing on approaches from postcolonial theory, decolonial theory, and critical race theory.

Past Research

My past research included: the construction of Pakistan's violent" national-cultural identity through locally produced vs. Hollywood and internationally produced films; the representation of 'racial passing' across US/UK films from the Jim Crow era to the 21^st; the re-appropriation of "vulgar" Punjabi stereotypes in Pakistani non-fiction as resistance cinema; the biopolitics of religious discrimination against Muslims in India's surveillance technologies; and how South Asian speculative fiction works as an imaginative tool to engage with issues of race and climate change.

Current Research

A second strand of my reserach explores the intersection of politics and graphic design in the decades surrounding Partition in South Asia, tracing how visual culture in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan reflected - and helped to shape - shifting national imaginaries. This includes the study of typography, print culture, and visual propaganda as sites where questions of identity, power, and modernity were negotiated in both colonial and postcolonial settings. 

I'm currently researching print archives such as Pakistan Quarterly Magazine, 1970s-80s print commercial ads targeting Pakistani women, Indian and Pakistani historical book covers and film posters. In particular, I'm working on projects I'll present at upcoming conferences in Fall/Winter 2025 at University of Leeds and University of Brighton, with titles: 

Soft Scripts: Urdu Typography and the “new ideal” of Postcolonial femininity in 20th century Pakistani Advertising

Red, Black, and Banned: Soviet Aesthetics in Urdu Political Print in Colonial India

Taught Courses

Media Aesthetics

Global Media Culture

Philosophy of Humanities II

Current Themes: Race & The Postcolonial Gothic (self-designed course)

BA Media & Culture Thesis Supervision

Every semester, I supervise several BA theses that connect to my research interests. Here are some completed thesis titles from my past students:

'Sounds of dissent: Unraveling resistance and reconstruction in
amerikkkan korruption (2012)'

'From Colony to Country: A tale of Three (Indian) Flags'

'Scheduled Modernity: Adivasis on the News'

'Hair as Cultural Resistance: Afro-Hairstyles Serving as Symbols for Black Identity Reclamation in Black Is King'

'The politics of landscapes in The Koker Trilogy: An analysis on the preservation of the collective memory and Iranian identity'

'Racism or Not? The Evolution of Chinese Misrepresentation in The Mask of Fu Manchu and Crazy Rich Asians'

'Not Quite White: Deconstructing the Postcolonial Gothic Horror of Us (2019)'

As part of the Research MA Media program, I'm a Tutor to the student cohorts. This includes being the students' first point of contact for queries related to their study program, particularly in supporting them to fulfill their program credit requirements; and I also organise social meetups and events.