Honorary Senior Fellows
(The names are arranged according to the first letter of their last names.)
Professor Dr. Mumtaz Anwar Chaudhry
Dean, Faculty of Business, Economics & Administrative Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore
Dr. Mumtaz Anwar Chaudhry is a distinguished economist and academic leader with extensive experience in teaching, research, and higher education management. His academic interests span political economy, governance, development economics, and public policy. As the founding Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics & Administrative Sciences and the founding Head of the School of Economics at the University of the Punjab, he has played a central role in institutional development and resource mobilization. He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Pakistan Economic and Social Review.
Over the course of his career, Dr. Chaudhry has held several senior leadership positions, including Vice Chancellor of the University of Jhang and Director of the Punjab Economic Research Institute (PERI) under the Government of Punjab’s Planning & Development Department. He earned his PhD in Economics from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and completed master’s degrees in Economics from the University of Leeds, UK (1994), and the International Islamic University, Islamabad (1992). He later pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in Public Policy at Harvard University, USA.
Professor Dr. Mahboob Hussain
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of the Punjab, Lahore
Dr. Mahboob Hussain is a noted historian and academic, currently serving as Dean, Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of the Punjab, Lahore. He also serves as the Director of the Research Society of Pakistan, where he promotes historical research and scholarship. An alumnus of the University of Oxford as a postdoc Fellow, Dr. Hussain holds a PhD in History and is widely acknowledged for his expertise in parliamentary studies, institutional development, and South Asian political history.
With more than twenty years of teaching and research experience, Dr. Hussain has made significant contributions to the study of Pakistan’s political trajectory. His scholarship focuses on parliamentary development, student movements under the Ayub Khan regime, and the evolution of state institutions in the post-independence period, particularly the functioning of Parliament between 1971 and 1977. He has presented his research at leading national and international academic forums and is recognized for combining archival research with contemporary analysis in his work.
Professor Dr. Asma Hyder
Dean, School of Economics and Social Sciences, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi
Dr. Asma Hyder is a Professor of Economics and former Professor or Dean of the School of Economics and Social Sciences at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi. She is also a Research Affiliate at the Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania. Over her career, she has been associated as a visiting fellow with leading international institutions, including the University of Sussex, the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Carleton University. Her academic and research interests lie in development economics, with a particular focus on labor markets. She has worked extensively on issues such as wage inequality, education, gender, health, and social wellbeing. While much of her research addresses Pakistan’s socio-economic challenges, her work also extends to South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.
Dr. Hyder has contributed significantly to the understanding of household behavior under economic stress in low-income societies. More recently, through the international Young Lives (YL) study, she has investigated how climate change affects children’s wellbeing, including their education, health, nutrition, and cognitive development. She holds a PhD in Economics from the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) and completed her postdoctoral research in Development Economics and International Development at the University of Pennsylvania.
Professor Dr. S. Akbar Zaidi
Executive Director, Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi
Dr. S. Akbar Zaidi is a distinguished political economist with over four decades of teaching and research experience in Pakistan and internationally. His scholarship spans political economy, development, social sciences, and history. Before assuming the role of Executive Director at IBA Karachi in 2020, Dr. Zaidi served as a Professor at Columbia University, New York, where he held joint appointments at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (MESAAS).
He has also taught at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, as a Visiting Professor (2004–2005), and worked at the Applied Economics Research Centre, University of Karachi, as a Senior Research Economist (1983–1996). Over the course of his career, Dr. Zaidi has authored more than 80 academic articles and several influential books, including Military, Civil Society and Democratization in Pakistan (2011), Issues in Pakistan’s Economy: A Political Economy Perspective (2015), and Making a Muslim: Reading Publics and Contesting Identities in Nineteenth-Century North India (2021). He earned his PhD in History from the University of Cambridge in 2009, an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge in 1993, an MSc in Social Planning in Developing Countries from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1982, and a BSc (Hons.) in Economics from University College London in 1980.