Nafisa Hoodboy
assistant producer

Nafisa

          For many years, Nafisa has been the one person who has made possible most of our programs in Pakistan. Educated in Karachi and at Northeastern University (Political Science), she briefly worked in a newspaper in New York and then returned to Karachi to become the sole woman reporter for the daily Dawn newspaper. At Dawn she covered everything-politics, health issues, women's issues, crime, politics and the environment. In 1995, she was part of the official Pakistani delegation to the 4th UN World Women's Conference in Beijing, and for many years has been a member of the Pakistan Commission on Human Rights. Somewhere, she also managed to file reports for Pacifica and Wings (Women's International Newsgathering Service) and be chief researcher/assistant producer for Channel Four and BBC TV on a series of documentaries on some of the more feudal aspects of Pakistani society, notably Brides of the Qur'an (1991), Defending Our Daughters (1997) and Honor Killing (1998). She has worked with us since 1993 on the issue of slavery in Sindh, and on the forthcoming episodes of Living Islam entitled A Case of Blasphemy, Thursday Night in Bhitshah, Sheela Siddiqui-A Confused Housewife and The Tabligh-i-Jama'at. In 2000, she left Pakistan to accept a Ford Fellowship at the Five Colleges Women Studies Research Center in Amherst, Massachusetts, and is currently writing a book on Pakistani politics.