Ather Zia

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Institutional Affiliation

University of Northern Colorado
College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Irvine in Anthropology

M.A, California State University, Fullerton in Communication

M.A., University of Kashmir, Mass Communication and Journalism

Research Interests

Human Rights; Political Anthropology; Gender; State terror; Muslim women social movements and activisms; engaged and applied anthropology; ethnographic poetry; anthropology of Kashmir region

Regional and Thematic Interests

Kashmir region; India and Pakistan; political  & socio-cultural anthropology; ethnographic poetry

Profile

Ather Zia, Ph.D., is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She earned her doctorate in Anthropology from UC Irvine in 2014. Currently, she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Gender Studies program at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley.

Ather is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir (June 2019), which received numerous accolades, including the 2020 Gloria Anzaldua Honorable Mention Award, the 2021 Public Anthropologist Award, the Advocate of the Year Award 2021, and an Honorable Mention for the 2021 Rosaldo Book Prize. She was also featured in the Femilist 2021, a list of 100 women from the Global South working on critical issues.

She is the co-editor of Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak? (Women Unlimited 2020) and A Desolation Called Peace (Harper Collins, May 2019). Ather’s poetry collection The Frame has been well received, with another collection forthcoming. Her ethnographic poetry on Kashmir won an award from the Society for Humanistic Anthropology.

In addition to her scholarly work, Ather is the founder and editor of Kashmir Lit and co-founder of the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective, an interdisciplinary network of scholars focused on the Kashmir region. She is also the co-editor of Cultural Anthropology (2022-2025).

Ather teaches both foundational and upper-division courses in Anthropology and Gender Studies, including:

• Gender in Global Conflict (ANT/GS 316) — Examining gendered agency through decolonial/anti-colonial feminist frameworks, collective protest, memory, and identity.
• Decolonize Your Mind (ANT/GS 395) — Critiquing colonial modes of thought and their impact on knowledge, language, and identity, especially in marginalized Indigenous communities.
• Anthropology of Sex and Gender (ANT 314) — Exploring the construction of gender and sex across cultures.
• Gender in Contemporary Global Order (GS 285) — explores gendered aspects of development, modernity, feminism, and climate change in neoliberal societies.

Upcoming courses include Anthropology of Religion (Fall 2025) & Ethnographic Anthropocene and Feminist Futures in Asia (Honors Program, Spring 2026).

Ather also supervises directed studies, internships, and doctoral students.