Zia Hossain, PhD

Dr. Hossain was born and raised in Bangladesh. He came to UNM as an assistant professor of family and child studies (FCS) in the Department of Individual, Family, and Community Education (IFCE) in 2005. The strengths of the FCS program, the reputation of UNM as a Research I institution, and the diverse sociocultural niche of the state attracted him to move to New Mexico.

Dr. Hossain received a B.S. Honors degree with distinction in Human Geography at Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh, an M.A. in Human Geography from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and a Ph.D. in Child and Family Studies from Syracuse University. He did post-doctoral research training at the University of Miami Medical School in Florida. He also completed a year-long Fulbright Fellowship to conduct teaching and research on fathers’ involvement in childcare and household labor in Malay and indigenous Kadazan families in Malaysia. Before joining UNM, Dr. Hossain taught in the Department of Psychology at Fort Lewis College.

Dr. Hossain conducts empirical research on the levels of fathers’ involvement in childcare and household labor in the ethnic minority (i.e., African American, Hispanic American, Navajo Indian) and international (i.e., Malay, Bengali, the Caribbean, Indian) families. His research systematically documents patterns of paternal involvement in understudied populations and has implications for deconstructing stereotypical findings on the levels of fathers’ involvement in international and ethnic minority families in the United States. In particular, the findings of his research have implications for understanding fathers’ contributions to children’s school and social development in less studied Hispanic, Navajo, and Mexican immigrant families in New Mexico. Dr. Hossain’s current research focuses on the impact of globalization on indigenous cultures, fathers' investment in school-age children's social and academic development in squatter families in Bangladesh, and the construction of the fathering role among migrant workers in Malaysia. An expansion of his research explores the roles of grandparents in the family and his co-edited book titled grandparents in cultural context(Routledge) came out in 2018.  Dr. Hossain’s professional leadership roles serve the Asian Family Center of New Mexico (AFCNM), Bangladesh Association for Community Education (BACE), and the editorial boards of education and psychology journals. He also was a past president of the Society for Cross-Cultural Research (SCCR). 

Dr. Hossain is a tenured Professor of Family and Child Studies and Regents’ Lecturer in the College of Education and Human Sciences at the University of New Mexico. He is excited about his Interim Department Chair role as “I care about my colleagues and the quality of their lives and am passionate about mentoring junior faculty and fostering student success”. Away from his faculty-scholar role, he enjoys nurturing his three children, writing for magazines, hiking in NM and the Himalayas, listening to (Bengali) classical music, and watching Western films.