About

    Nafisa Nipun Tanjeem (she/her) is an educator, researcher, writer, and activist. Currently, she works as an Associate Professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at Worcester State University in Massachusetts, United States.

    Research and Teaching Interests

    Nafisa’s research and teaching interests include transnational, postcolonial, and decolonial feminisms; critical race theory; globalization and feminist politics; critical community engagement; critical university studies; and transnational social justice movements with a specific focus on the United States and South Asia. Before joining Worcester State University, Nafisa taught at Lesley University, Rutgers University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Dhaka.

    Nafisa is currently working on finishing her book manuscript that examines transnational labor activism and activist discourses developed in relation to the deadliest garment industrial disaster in human history, the 2013 collapse of Rana Plaza – a factory building housing five garment factories in Savar, Bangladesh, and continued until the global COVID-19 pandemic. The project examines the gendered, racialized, classed, and (trans)national trajectory of labor organizing around the Accord, the Alliance, and the COVID-19 pandemic proposing diverging concepts of safety, security, and labor rights, and the challenges that arise when these concepts clash in various local and global, physical and virtual organizing spaces.

    Community Organizing and Public Scholarship

    Nafisa has been actively involved in community organizing and social justice activism. She is an organizer of the Meye (“Woman” in Bangla) network and the Feminist Alliance of Bangladesh – both of whom are voluntary, grassroots, and organic networks advocating for feminist solidarity and organizing in Bangladesh.

    In the past, she was a co-chief steward of the core faculty union of Lesley University, which was a part of SEIU Local 509. She organized with the Rutgers University chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) on the garment worker solidarity campaign in New Jersey. She also worked as a Community Organizer and Events Coordinator with the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA) on poverty reduction, gender equity, and youth engagement among South Asian immigrant communities in Toronto, Canada.

    Nafisa recognizes the value of public scholarship in circulating and engaging academic research with the community. Her public scholarship has been published on many local and international platforms, such as Common Dreams, Jamhoor, the Daily Star, New Age, Prothom Alo, Thotkata, and Bama. She was the winner of the 2025 “Public Scholarship Award” of the International Association for Research on Service Learning and Community Engagement (IARSLCE).

    Education

    Ph.D. (Women’s and Gender Studies), Rutgers University, USA, 2017

    M.A. (Women’s and Gender Studies), University of Toronto, Canada, 2009

    B.A. (Women and Gender Studies), University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2008