Naveeda Khan is an associate professor of anthropology and was recently featured in the Arts & Sciences Weekly newsletter.

Describe your primary research or scholarship, and tell us what is most exciting about your current project.

I have just completed a book manuscript on the UN-led climate negotiations and I continue to follow them. I plan to attend the Conference of Parties (COP) in Glasgow this November. The recent  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report is damning of what the UN process has delivered over almost 30 years, but the report’s publication will make for an exciting upcoming COP, to see if the report is able to put real pressure on the process.  I have my doubts, but I can’t help hoping.   

Share a best practice or tip for successful teaching or mentoring.

I like to respond to student emails almost immediately, because I like them to know that there is a living breathing person at the other end of their inquiries, that their emails are not just ending up in spam or junk. That being said, I prefer to limit work conversations to one to two days in the week, or else I find I don’t have the mental calm to read, write, and prepare for classes.    

What do you like to do outside of work?

The lockdown has revealed to me the extent to which I have become a junky for zombie shows, international crime dramas and science fiction novels. This could be seen as a marked deterioration in my tastes from my youth, but I prefer to see it as diagnostic of our present, our search for not just escapism but alternate realities, which as we know from recent events flirts with danger.  So that is what I like to do outside of work, both consume entertainment and try to think critically about this consumption. It’s an ongoing effort.