Nafhesa is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Northumbria University and an interdisciplinary Sociologist with expertise in migration and the everyday lives of racialised and minority communities. Nafhesa actively works to promote inclusive research methods and participatory research that aims to decolonize methodological approaches and pedagogy through creative methodologies.

She is a Co-Investigator for the ‘Towards Inclusive Environmental Sustainability (TIES)’ Leverhulme-funded project and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Manchester. Prior to this, Nafhesa was a PDRA on the AHRC Storying Relationships project at the University of Sheffield. 

Nafhesa completed her PhD in 2015 and her monograph based on her PhD research, titled Older South Asian Women’s Experiences of Ageing in the UK: Intersectional Feminist Perspectives is out now and has been published with Palgrave Macmillan (2024).

Nafhesa’s publications include a co-authored book, Storying Relationships (2021) and is co-editor for A Match Made in Heaven: British Muslim Women Write about Love and Desire (2020). Nafhesa has journal publications in Sexualities, Ethnicities, Ethnic and Racial Studies and Cultural Geographies.  

Nafhesa is a UNESCO Policy Advisor and member of the British Academy Net Zero Reference group.