Nexus

I am Kazi Rashid, a PhD candidate at Western Sydney university. I was selected as the recipient of the Jerzy Zubrzycki Bursary for TASA 2025, which took place in Melbourne from 24–27 November. I presented my paper in one of the sessions facilitated by the Migration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism (MEM) thematic group in TASA. The paper title is.

‘From Bangladesh to Downunder: Translocational sense of belonging transnationally-married Muslim Bangladeshi-Australian women’.

This is part of my PhD research, which examines the  lived experiences of transnational arranged marriage, migration, integration, belonging and identity (re) construction among  Bangladeshi-Australian women.

Receiving the bursary also reinforced my confidence in the value and relevance of my PhD research within the field of migration and integration, particularly in reltioan to the experiences of Muslim women in Australia.  I am grateful to TASA for the bursary that enabled me to participate in the TASA Conference in person. TASA provides an excellent platform for early career researchers like me to share our research and receive valuable feedback from scholars across diverse fields.

In addition to presenting my research, I attended several sessions that enriched my understanding of the current, important, and exciting work taking place within the discipline of Sociology. Through the Q&A sessions, I learned that asking meaningful questions is a skill researchers must cultivate if they genuinely wish to engage as active participants. While I spent most of my time attending MEM sessions, I found the panel discussion on ‘Intersections & Crossroads: Gender & the Career Life Course of a Sociologist’ especially insightful as a female sociologist. This discussion highlighted how gender intersecting with other axes of identity such as motherhood or divorce status, shapes one’s research journey. It showed how occupying multiple positionalities can both produce barriers and generate resources, and how female sociologists navigate, cope with, and sometimes challenge these constraints in building their careers.



Overall, while I joined the conference prepared to present my paper, I left with far more—new insights, perspectives, and professional connections that will support my development as a more confident and productive researcher. My heartfelt thanks to TASA for selecting me for the bursary and making my in-person participation possible.