Renowned Bangladeshi origin sociologist Dr Nazli Kibria has been appointed chair of the Department of Sociology at Boston University.

Daughter of former finance minister late Shah AMS Kibria and Asma Kibria, Prof Nazli had served as the acting chair of the same department in the university, said a press release yesterday.

Before joining Boston University, she taught in several top class universities including Harvard, Tufts and South California.

Her work won a number of highly reputed research grants and she was honoured with several prestigious fellowships and awards in recognition of her contribution to research in gender and sociology.

She was given Outstanding Contribution to Feminist Scholarship Award by National Council on Family relations. Prof Nazli Kibria did her PhD in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1986. Her area of specialisation is sociology of families, childhood, immigration, race and ethnicity, Asian diasporas and contemporary South Asia, particularly Bangladesh.

She is published widely in international journals and publishing houses. Some of her books are Family Tightrope: The Changing Lives of Vietnamese Americans, Muslim in Motion: Islam and National Identity in the Bangladesh Diaspora, and Becoming Asian American: Identities of Second Generation Chinese and Korean Americans.