Dr. Ashraf Ghani, born in 1949, went to High School in Afghanistan and the United States. He earned his B.A. and MA in political science from the American University of Beirut. He taught at the School of Literature at Kabul University from 1973-77. He spent 1977-1982 at Columbia University, earning an MA, MPhil and PhD in anthropology. He taught at ARUS University in Denmark, UC Berkeley briefly, and then at Johns Hopkins from 1983-92, and did yearlong fieldwork during 1985-86 on Islamic discourses and practices in Pakistan. He spent 1992-2001 at the World Bank, returning to Afghanistan on December 26, 2001, he resigned from the World Bank to be home. He visited all 34 provinces of the country repeatedly during the next 21 years. His current research focus is on the emerging transitions during the current historical moment of permacrisis, interactions between Islamic cultural traditions and other cultural traditions, and the place of Afghanistan as a roundabout in Asian history. Formation, conceptualization, and consequences of narratives are among his foci of interest.