Haroon Khalid has an academic background in Anthropology. He got his undergraduate degree from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Social Sciences with a focus in anthropology and history, and graduate degree in Anthropology from The University of Toronto.

He has been a freelance journalist since 2008 and has written over 350 articles, for numerous publications including Al Jazeera, CBC, MacLean’s, Scroll.in, Wire.in, TRT World, Himal, Dawn, The News, Express Tribune, and others. He has traveled extensively around Pakistan and has written about minority rights, folk traditions, politicization of history and heritage, nationalism and identity, and several other topics.

Haroon is the author of five books – A White Trail (2013), In Search of Shiva (2015) Walking with Nanak (2016), Imagining Lahore (2018), and From Waris to Heer (2024). He has also written two short non-fiction books, The Enigma of Pakistani Identity (2017) and Beyond the Other (2016), and has contributed to several anthologies. In his work Haroon explores fluid identities, traditions and religious practices that challenge the notion of exclusivist identities that define communities in South Asia today. His writings have been translated into many languages including Punjabi, Urdu, Hindi, Bangla, Gujrati and Italian. 

In addition to being a writer and journalist, Haroon is also an educator. He has taught Advanced Level Sociology, Philosophy and Theology, Global Perspectives and Research, and World History in various schools in Islamabad and Lahore. He worked as Minority Project Director at Citizens Archive of Pakistan for two years, and has been a consultant with UNESCO and World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). He is currently based in Toronto, documenting oral histories of immigrants to Canada with his partner, Anam Zakaria, through the platform of their collective, Qissa, and working as Digital Communications Manager at Toronto Arts Council and Toronto Arts Foundation.