Zulfiqar Ahmad is a Nautilus Institute Senior Associate working in issues of peace, security and sustainable development in South Asia. He is the former Peace and Security Program Officer for South Asia at the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development. At the Nautilus Institute, Zulfiqar was responsible for the production of SANDnet reports as well as for the planning, development and implementation of Institute's South Asia programs.

A native of Pakistan, Zulfiqar has a long history of political activism, beginning with his active involvement in the student movement against General Zia's military regime in 1981-82. He came to the U.S. as an undergraduate student at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. His multi-disciplinary undergraduate thesis combined the study of literature, history and politics to understand the development of the modern world since the French Revolution. After working with a publisher in New York for a year, Zulfiqar joined the political science department of the University of Chicago as a doctoral candidate and completed his Master's degree in Comparative Politics in 1992. The primary focus of Zulfiqar's academic and professional career has been the history and politics of South Asia.

For the past six years, Zulfiqar has been the primary caregiver for his young daughter, while working from home on a number of part-time and flexible projects that have included work as an editor and writer for a number of not-for-profit groups like the Global Fund for Women, Asian American and Pacific Islanders In Philanthropy (an affinity group of The Council on Foundations). As part of the high-tech gold rush, he was also an independent consultant with webmama.com, an internet company specializing in website placement in search engines.

Most recently, (April - July 2001), he worked on an International Labor Organization funded research/mapping project on labor organizations within the informal sector of Pakistan's economy. He has written essays on politics and literature for various Pakistani newspapers and magazines.

Zulfiqar joined the Nautilus staff on October 22, 2001.