Nishat is a first-year Ph.D. student whose research examines how Islamophobia and anti-immigrant racism are produced and institutionalized through media and public policy.
Her M.A. thesis examined how post-9/11 U.S. news media and legal frameworks mutually reinforced the construction of Muslim identity as a security threat. Her undergraduate honors thesis used computational text analysis and media theory to study how news framing shapes public attention and responsibility across representations of genocidal violence.
Nishat understands scholarship as deeply connected to collective action, and she is committed to research that supports communities in challenging systems of oppression to build a more just world.
Interests
Anti-immigrant racism, digital media, Islamophobia, media representation, political communication, and U.S. foreign policy
