Amina Yaqin is Professor in World and Postcolonial Literatures at the University of Exeter. Her research interests are interdisciplinary engaging with narratives on gender, culture and media. She has published numerous books and articles on selected topics related to twentieth century Urdu and Anglophone literatures, feminism, multiculturalism and Islamophobia. Her major publications include Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani Urdu Writing (2022) and Framing Muslims: stereotyping and representation after 9/11 (with Peter Morey). Currently, she is co-investigator of the Arts and Humanities funded project, Empathy, Narrative and Cultural Values exploring health and education amongst South Asian Muslim communities in the West Midlands. Her commentary and interviews have been aired by the BBC, SkyNews, EuroNews, France24, TRT World, Indus News and Pakistan Television Network. She has written for The National UAE, The Times Higher Education UK, the British Film Institute, The Conversation, The Friday Times.
workshop
Led by Prof Dr Amina Yaqin, this interactive workshop examines how Pakistani television drama shapes and reflects ideas of gender, citizenship, and gender-based violence. Through guided discussion and selected drama clips, participants will explore who gets to tell stories on screen, forms of storytelling including melodrama and romance, and how themes such as marriage, honour, inheritance, and coercive control are portrayed in popular narratives. The session invites audiences to critically reflect on the representation of normalised behaviours, social stigmas, and emotions that trigger discomfort, empathy, or trauma. Combining audience discussion, small group engagement, and reflective exercises, the workshop creates space for dialogue on how media narratives represent lived realities—particularly for women—and how viewers interpret, respond to and are impacted by representations of gender and violence in everyday popular media content consumption.
