Sanniah Jabeen

PhD Candidate

Campus

Fields of Study

Areas of Interest

  • South Asian Art and Material Culture
  • Textiles
  • Islamic Art and Material Culture
  • Indigenous Art and Craft
  • Materiality
  • Cross-cultural exchange
  • Politics of representation
  • Craft networks and trade

Working Dissertation

Supervisors

Kajri Jain

Biography

Sanniah Jabeen is a PhD student in the Department of Art History at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral research focuses on textiles from South Asia and particularly the impact of digital printing, machine-replication, and mass-production on modern and contemporary 'folk' crafts in Pakistan. Central to her research are questions of how artisans and craft communities respond to changing markets, movements across networks of craft exchange, differing forms of gendered craft labor, textiles as markers of ethnicity and nationality, and concerns over the ‘indigeneity’ of the handmade. For her dissertation, Sanniah is studying the "Ajrak," a block-printed and resist dyed rectangular cotton textile. By considering its handmade forms and mass-produced representations as a markers of certain ethnicity, the Ajrak is juxtaposed as a political tool of representation with its high-fashion counterpart amidst global concerns around craft-preservation.

Selected Publications

Recent Awards

  • 2021–24 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship
  • 2021 Curatorial Residency Award, The University of Toronto Art Museum
  • 2020–21 Dan Mishra Intern for South-Asia at the Royal Ontario Museum
  • 2020 Graduate Expansion Fund, University of Toronto Mississauga
  • 2019 Faculty of Arts & Science Recognition of Excellence Award, University of Toronto
  • 2019 Graduate Expansion Fund, University of Toronto Mississauga

Education

MA, The University of Chicago, Humanities
BA (Hons), Lahore University of Management Sciences, Humanities

Administrative Service

2020–present Newsletter Editor for the Canadian Society for Decorative Arts
2020–21 Graduate Union for Students of Art History (GUStA) representative for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Toronto
2020–21 Graduate Union for Students of Art History (GUStA) representative for Social Events
2020–21 Graduate Union for Students of Art History (GUStA) representative for Faculty-Student Liaising
2019–20 Co-Chair for the Wollesen Memorial Graduate Symposium hosted by Graduate Union for Students of Art History (GUStA)
2015 Co-founder of the Student Network of Culture, Arts and Policy (SNOCAP) at the University of Chicago

Cohort