Omer is a Doctoral student in Educational Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is interested in social repair processes after natural disasters. His research focuses on the emotional geographies of humanitarian interventions including notions of aid as ‘trauma’ for communities and natural disasters as instances of ‘collective violence’. Omer holds a MAP in Community and Social Planning from the University of British Columbia and a BBA in Strategic Management from the University of Toronto.
Prior to returning to UBC for his doctorate, Omer worked as a humanitarian aid worker, most recently in flood response and recovery projects in Pakistan. His work focused on the reconciliation of the unique mandates and interventional aspirations of humanitarian initiatives with the lifeworlds of communities and their highly contextualized and situated needs. He just completed field research with the United Nations Human Settlements Program exploring community narratives of recovery and resilience also in post-flood Pakistan. Omer also does work with the International Union for Conservation of Nature on themes pertaining to community social and ecological resilience to natural hazards and conflicts.
