Currently teaching at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Mariam Pirbhai was born in 1970 in Pakistan. Her maternal grandmother was the daughter of a Welsh civil servant. Her parents were born in undivided India and raised in Pakistan. Before moving to Canada in the 1980s, Pirbhai’s family had lived in England, the United Arab Emirates, and the Philippines. Pirbhai has a multi-ethnic and multicultural family, as she is married to a Latin American from Guatemala. She received her PhD in English from the University of Montreal and was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal. She has an interest in photography and painting.