PhD Candidate, Adult Learning and Education, UBC | Public Scholar | Sessional Lecturer, EDST
Thomas Hood’s poem“Song of the Shirt” (1843) echoed the cries of a garment worker trapped in the dehumanization of labor and despair. Nearly two centuries later, those echoes resound in Bangladesh’s garment industry, where 4.1 million workers—mostly women—endure similar conditions. My research listens to these resonances and asks: how might education, emerging from workers’ collective praxis, become a path toward understanding oppression and reclaiming agency for change?
Before joining UBC, I studied sociology at the University of Dhaka and adult education at Penn State University. Over the past decade, I have worked in research, policy, and advocacy with international organizations, including the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the State University of New York. As a sessional lecturer at EDST and a UBC Public Scholar, I am committed to fostering dialogical pedagogy—where learning becomes a collective act of transformation.
Supervisor: Jude Walker
Public Scholar’s Profile: https://www.grad.ubc.ca/campus-community/meet-our-students/iqbal-jafar