Ainoon Naher is Professor of anthropology at Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. A member of the first cohort of anthropology graduates from Jahangirnagar University, which established the first department of anthropology in Bangladesh in the 1985, she went on to receive an M.A. in Anthropology with distinction from University of Sussex, UK and PhD in Anthropology, magna cum laude, from the South Asian Institute, University of Heidelberg, Germany. Her research interests include gender, Islam, development, ethnicity and identity politics. She is the author of Gender, Religion and Development in Rural Bangladesh (VDM Verlag, Germany, 2008), a book based on her PhD dissertation, and  several published articles.