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Dr Ferdoush is an editorial board member at Geopolitics, serves as an elected governing body member (2023-25) at the Political Geography Specialty Group (PGSG) of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), and as a panellist for the Social Sciences for the Publication Forum of the Federation of Finnish Learned Society (2022-2024). He has previously served as a member in the Alec Murphy Dissertation Enhancement Award Committee of the PGSG (2021-2023).
Dr Ferdoush’ past projects have been funded by, among others, the Research Council of Finland and the American Association of Geographers (AAG). He was also offered Asia Research Institute postdoctoral fellowship (2020) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Core Fellowship at the University of Helsinki (2022) which he declined. Dr Ferdoush was awarded the prestigious East-West Center Graduate Degree Fellowship funded by the US government to pursue his PhD at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Dr Ferdoush’ research has featured in national and international outlets, won awards, and been recognized. In recognition of his scholarship, the Political Geography Specialty Group (PGSG) of the AAG named him the 2023 Stanley D. Brunn Junior Scholar.
As a human geographer, Dr Ferdoush works at the intersection of political geography, geographies of the global South, decolonial praxis, critical geopolitics, and qualitative research methods. Primarily applying ethnographic methods of investigation but often combining them with other tools such as auto-photography and activity journals, Ferdoush specializes studying migration, borders, (non)citizenship, nation, state, territory, and sovereignty. His past projects have empirically focused on Bangladesh and Finland.
Ferdoush remains interested in the questions of social (in)justice, specifically the right to move through a lens of identity-based inequalities and categorical privileges. Subsequently, he asks how artificially created categories and identities affect marginal peoples' lives and embodied experiences from a spatio-temporal perspective. At the same time, Ferdoush takes a cautious stand regarding "importing" ready-made ideas from the Global North to the Global South in terms of both theory and methods.
Dr Ferdoush’ current research interest may be divided under three broader themes
- Geographies of the example and the exception
- Borders, mobility, and migration
- State, (non)citizenship, and the nation
Dr Ferdoush has published widely across highly reputed journals and other platforms including Antipode, Political Geography, Geopolitics, Geoforum, Area, Citizenship Studies, and Ethnography. He is the author of Sovereign Atonement: Citizenship, Territory, and the State at the Bangladesh-India Border published by Cambridge University Press (2024) and co-editor of Borders and Mobility in South Asia and Beyond published by Amsterdam University Press (2018).
As an educator, Dr Ferdoush’ teaching style centres on diverse and experiential learning, a method that is perhaps compatible with our ever-increasing engagements with the virtual world. Ferdoush encourages students to begin to connect the dots between theories of human geography and social life by referring to their daily encounters in the classroom, the wider society, and the world of web. Student-centric, reciprocal, and diverse are the three keywords that motivate Ferdoush’ philosophy of teaching. He puts students at the centre of a course so that the topics raised in class may enable students to identify and develop their own social, political, and intellectual agendas. Ferdoush’ classes are consciously design and planed so each of them becomes an interactive and reciprocal exercise of knowledge sharing instead of a one-way flow of lectures.
Dr Ferdoush’ pedagogical approach has been significantly influenced by his embodied and academic experience as he lived and taught in Bangladesh, the United States, and Finland. Ferdoush actively creates room for the local students and students of colour to ensure their "voices" are heard. Classes are declared "safe space" to make sure that students of diverse and international backgrounds feel comfortable in expressing their points of view, which may not always match with the taken-for-granted theoretical strands, methods, and history of the social sciences in the Global North.
Dr Ferdoush has (co)taught numerous modules both at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. These classes range in size (large introductory lectures and small sections), format (in-person and online), topics (general and specialized), and across institutions.
By meeting them on their own terms but maintaining high yet achievable expectations, Ferdoush mentors students toward becoming confident communicators and sophisticated thinkers. In turn, he expects to be held to an equally high standard by his students.
Current Postgraduate Students
- Thomas Bennett
Peer-reviewed journal articles
- 2023: Ferdoush, M.A. Showcase citizens: Citizenship in the making along the borders of post-colonial South Asia. Citizenship Studies, 27(1) Pp. 59-80,
- 2022: Ferdoush M.A. and Väätänen, V. Anticipatory Arctic identity: Understanding the Finnish state’s approach to the Arctic. Area, 54(4), Pp. 618-626
- 2022: Ferdoush, M.A. Flexible land: The state and its citizens’ negotiation over land ownership. Geoforum, 130, Pp. 46-58.
- 2022: , Pp. 1-9.
- 2020: Ferdoush, M.A. Navigating the 'field': Reflexivity, uncertainties, and negotiation along the border of Bangladesh and India. Ethnography, 24 (2) Pp. 176-196.
- 2019: Ferdoush, M.A. Acts of belonging: The choice of citizenship in the former border enclaves of Bangladesh and India. Political Geography, 70 Pp. 83-91
Book
- 2024: Ferdoush, M. A. Sovereign atonement: Citizenship, territory, and the state along the Bangladesh-India border. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Edited volume
- 2018: Jones, R. and Ferdoush, M. A. (eds) Borders and mobility in South Asia and beyond. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. .