Having received her PhD from the Department of History at Rice University and MA at the University of Houston, she teaches and works on racial formation in the American South after 1965, urban history, the history of immigration to Houston, and ethnic and diasporic identities. ​

Uzma Quraishi gave two lectures as a Scholar-in-Residence 2015 on her research on Jim Crow in Houston Neighborhoods.​

Race and the City: Houston Neighborhoods in the Post-Jim Crow era

De Facto Segregation after Jim Crow: The Transition of Houston’s Neighborhoods in Good Times and Bad