Farida is committed to creating pathways to healing that are rooted in cultural understanding and empowerment.

Farida Bibi Mughal is a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, where she is conducting research on trauma recovery among South Asian immigrant women who have experienced intimate partner violence. Her dissertation explores how self-awareness, meaning in life, and resilience function as protective factors in how these women recover from trauma. By identifying these strengths and leveraging culturally relevant insights, she aims to create evidence-based interventions that support healing.

Before coming to Michigan, Farida earned both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nursing from Aga Khan University in Pakistan, where she also served as a clinical nurse and later as an instructor. Her academic excellence has been recognized through multiple awards, including the Exceptional Early Career Teaching Award and the Great Distinction Award for her master’s thesis. At U-M, she is a Joan P. Ireland Scholar, a Gupta Value Scholar, and a member of Phi Kappa Phi. Her long-term goal is to further validate a multicultural assessment tool in a postdoctoral role to help clinicians understand trauma recovery across diverse populations.

Farida’s dedication to social change is rooted in both professional experience and personal inspiration. Her work as a nurse showed her the impact of resilience on patient outcomes, and a close friend’s survival journey motivated her focus on gender-based violence. Based on these experiences, Farida is committed to creating pathways to healing that are rooted in cultural understanding and empowerment. Her work champions gender equity, health equity, and systemic social change within South Asian communities and beyond.

CEW+ recognizes Farida’s dedication to helping women heal from intimate partner violence and names her a Riecker Graduate Student Research Fellow.