Tabasum Akseer
Adjunct Professor
Dr. Tabasum Akseer is Senior Advisor with an international non-governmental organization where she supports research design, implementation, and capacity building across South and Southeast Asia, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Timor-Leste. In this on-call role, she advances rigorous qualitative and quantitative research methods and provides technical leadership on research ethics, survey design, randomized control trials, and mixed-methods analysis.
Previously, Dr. Akseer served as Director of the Policy and Research Department their Afghanistan office (2017–2022), where she led one of the country’s largest policy research portfolios and managed national-level capacity-building programs on the use of data and evidence in public policymaking and governance. She has also contributed to policy-relevant research and program design through consulting engagements, including with the World Bank supporting development initiatives in Afghanistan.
Dr. Akseer’s academic and professional work sits at the intersection of public policy, gender, immigration, security, and human rights. She was a post-doctoral research fellow and consultant at the Centre for International and Defence Policy, Queen’s University, and has held teaching roles as a fellow and assistant in Gender Studies, the School of Religion, and the Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures.
Dr. Akseer earned her PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University, where her dissertation examined the nexus of immigration, security, and gender. She also holds a Master’s degree in Education and an Honours Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Brock University.
Dr. Akseer teaches MPA 848: Immigration Policy in Canada (Winter 2026).