Shahwar is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology focused on music and Muslim belonging in South Asia across space, time, and media. Her currently ongoing research blends multiperspectival ethnographic and historiographical methods to study the relations between performance, listenership, and patronage networks of sama mehfils (music assemblies) rooted to Sufi Muslim shrines across Awadhi qasbahs (small towns). She follows hereditary practitioners of both sung and recited genres of Indo-Islamic music, as they negotiate musicality, intimacy, religiosity and modernity in the Indian nation state. She has an MA in Film Studies from Jadavpur University, Calcutta, and an MPhil in Cinema Studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, (JNU) Delhi. At JNU she wrote her dissertation on Qawwali in Contemporary South Asian Popular Cultures mapping the proliferation of qawwali music across the Muslim pilgrimage space, Bollywood, and Coke Studio Pakistan. Views reflecting her research are available as articles on Firstpost and Economic and Political Weekly and as a podcast on Ergo Masala Studios.

Research interests: musicality in South Asian Islam; music and belonging; Muslim emotional and culture worlds in Awadh and Bengal; oral historiography; socio-cultural and visual anthropology; Bollywood; global new-media convergence cultures; secularism; nationalism; South Asia.

Teaching experience: In India, she has taught as an assistant professor of film and media sciences in Calcutta. At UCLA she has assisted in teaching courses on jazz in American culture, music and media, and Bollywood music.

Leadership experience:
Vice President: HASOM Graduate Student Council, GSC, 2022-23.
President: Ethnomusicology Graduate Student Organization, EGSO, 2021-22.