Dr. Javaria Farooqui is a distinguished scholar who earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Tasmania, Australia, in January 2022, with a specialization in Society and Culture. Her research expertise spans popular fiction and culture, intersectional feminism, media studies, and race and ethnicity. Her book, Romance Fandom in 21st-Century Pakistan: Reading the Regency, presents an original and significant contribution to multiple academic fields, including fan studies, romance studies, women’s history, and histories of reading. Her recent publications include “From a Toy to a Tool: Reception of Barbie (2023) and the Cultural Ambiguity in Contemporary Pakistan,” published in Feminist Theory, and “Buildings, Books, and Memories: Analyzing the Culture of Reading Anglophone Romance Novels in Pakistan,” featured in The Journal of Postcolonial Writing. Dr. Farooqui speaks regularly at universities on topics ranging from academic writing to popular fiction and creative writing. She has also appeared on international podcasts and ABC radio, where she discusses her research and insights into Pakistani readers and literary culture. Her recent presentations were on book retail culture (at the NZGS conference in Tauranga, New Zealand), and Pakistani popular television dramas (in New Orleans, USA). Also, she was the keynote speaker for the Tenth International Conference of the International Association for the Study of Popular Romance, held in Mexico City in June 2025.