Graduate Profile: Mashal Farrukh, MTS '23

Favorite Class or Professor 

My favourite class was "Muslim Women Navigating Social Media" taught by Professor Jamil. This class not only enabled me to unpack and discern the multilayered engagement of Muslim women on different social media platforms, but also deepened my understanding of visibility politics and systemic surveillance of certain groups of people in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout the semester we closely analyzed Instagram posts and TikTok videos, as well as presented our viewpoints on the intersectionality of race, class, gender and religiosity in how certain influencers positioned themselves on these platforms. The best and admittedly most intimidating part of this course was the final project (making up 40 percent of the final grade). All of us were required to make and present a TikTok video on a topic relevant to Muslim women’s social media engagement. Most of us downloaded TikTok for the first time just for this course. I will forever cherish how this pushed me to explore and showcase impressive attempts by some influencers to create and sustain a discourse on sexual health among Muslims through my TikTok video. 

What I Hope to Be Remembered By 

I hope to be remembered as a friend who wholeheartedly believed in and used the power of chai nights and mushroom cheese omelets to help her friends through their mountain loads of grief and struggles. I hope to be remembered as a friend who showed up, was ready to forgive, and with whom it was always easy to laugh with. Last but not least, I wish to be remembered as that annoying friend who forced everyone to abandon their sleep on long weekends and go on hikes to breathtakingly beautiful spots around Boston with her. 

Future Plans 

I plan to return to work on educational development in Pakistan and expand my work on leveraging different forms of visual pedagogy (especially film) as a means of fostering tolerance and advocating social justice in an increasingly polarized world. I was drawn to HDS because of the Religious Literacy Project as it was called back in the day and was fascinated by the RLP’s aspiration of curbing direct and indirect forms of violence by improving the public understanding of how religions are internally diverse and inextricably tied to the context they operate in. My time at HDS has solidified my faith in the power of education in bringing about social change at multiple levels and I will carry the lessons I have acquired here as I advance my work in enhancing pedagogical tools and resources in the developing world through the use of technology in education.