Nava Rizvi

About Nava’s Research:

Contemporary debates on decolonial praxis in culture, business, and education sectors focus on replacing power infrastructures with those of care, solidarity, and equal representation. How do we form solidarity collectives that sustain liberation-focused structures? In today’s Middle Eastern political context, examining print material, like the cultural magazine “Lotus”, is critical for understanding anti-colonial resistance as a precursor to current global decolonial discourse.

This project examines Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s editorship, from 1978-1984, of Lotus. A trilingual political, literary magazine, Lotus connected Afro-Asian writers, promoting decolonial solidarity across the Global South. Published in English, Arabic, and French, Lotus cultivated revolution through poetry, essays, and art, becoming a unique platform connecting readership across Middle Eastern, North Africa, and South Asian (MENASA) regions. By using intermedial studies and digital humanities approaches, this research explores text-image relationships, translation, and cultural memory to identify recurring themes of revolution, solidarity, decoloniality, and cultural identity. Additionally, this project examines how Lotus’ digitisation transforms the magazine into a reflection for digital cultural memory that fosters connections across generations.