Dr. Zainab Kay

Development Geography and Disaster Studies Specialist

Dr. Zainab Khalid specializes in climate vulnerability assessment, disaster resilience, and the gendered dimensions of climate adaptation in mountain communities. With interdisciplinary expertise spanning disaster studies, climate science, and development geography, she brings distinctive understanding of how climate change intersects with mobility, displacement, and community resilience in Pakistan's most vulnerable regions. Dr. Zainab currently serves as Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Geography, University of Bonn, where she researches climate-induced mobility, disaster resilience, and the politics of climate justice in international policy spaces. From 2022 to 2023, she served as Lecturer and Faculty Member at the Center for Climate Research and Development, COMSATS University Islamabad, actively engaging with Pakistan's climate policy sphere and contributing to awareness campaigns including GIZ Germany's Strengthening Climate Adaptation and Resilience project. She completed her PhD in Geography (Disaster Studies) at Lanzhou University, China, where her research examined multidimensional hazard vulnerability and disaster resilience in rural mountain communities along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor route. During this period, she conducted extensive fieldwork across the Hindu Kush Himalayan region, Qinghai plateau, and Sichuan province, integrating community perspectives with technical hazard assessments. Her research focuses on vulnerability profiling in mountain ecosystems, gendered dimensions of climate disasters (particularly glacier lake outburst floods), indigenous knowledge systems and community-based disaster risk reduction, climate-induced migration and immobility dynamics, and the gap between international climate policy and local implementation realities. She is a two-time Himalayan University Consortium Fellow at ICIMOD Nepal and has contributed to three international book projects with the United States Institute of Peace and Routledge London, including a chapter on indigenous commoning practices in Hunza, Pakistan. Her peer-reviewed publications examine holistic vulnerability assessment frameworks, gendered climate vulnerabilities, and cross-cultural disaster research methodologies. She actively participates in decolonization dialogues and follows UNFCCC processes, critically analyzing how climate justice, representation, and reparations are negotiated in international policy spaces. Dr. Zainab holds a PhD in Geography (Disaster Studies) from Lanzhou University, China, an MS in Energy Management from COMSATS University Islamabad and a BSc in Environmental Sciences from COMSATS University Abbottabad. When not teaching or researching, Dr. Zainab spends time with her toddler daughter and finds refuge in music and books.