Dr. Rasul Bakhsh Rais

Dr. Rais has a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  He served at LUMS as Professor of Political Science for about 11 years. Before joining LUMS, he remained associated with the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad for nearly 22 years as Professor/Director, Area Study Centre and prior to that as Associate Professor in the Department of International Relations.  He was Quaid-i-Azam Distinguished Professor of Pakistan Studies at Columbia University, New York for 3 years, 1991-94.  He took the Fulbright fellowship at Wake Forest University (1997-98), the Social Science Research Fellowship at Harvard University (1989-90), and the Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in International Relations at the University of California, Berkeley (1985-85).

Dr. Rais is the author of ‘Recovering the Frontier State: War, Ethnicity and State in Afghanistan’ (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008), ‘War Without Winners: Afghanistan’s Uncertain Transition after the Cold War’ (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996), and ‘Indian Ocean and the Superpowers: Economic, Political and Strategic Perspectives’ (London: Croom Helm, 1986). He is the editor of ‘State, Society and Democratic Change in Pakistan’ (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1997) and co-edited ‘Pakistan, 1995’ (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996) with Charles H. Kennedy.

He has published widely in professional journals on political and security issues peraining to South Asia, Indian Ocean and Afghanistan. His current research interests are:“Modernism, State and Challenge of Radical Islam in Pakistan.”