About: Ayesha Jalal

Ayesha Jalal is a Pakistani-American sociologist and historian. She is a professor of history at Tufts University and a MacArthur Fellow. The bulk of her work deals with the creation of Muslim identities in modern South Asia. She is the daughter of Hamid Jalal, a nephew of the famous Urdu fiction writer Saadat Hasan Manto and a civil servant. Ms. Jalal came to New York at the age of 16.