Basira Mir Makhamad is working on her dissertation research at the Max Planck Institute for Geoanthropology in collaboration with Fredrick Schiller University. She is interested in medieval trade routes through Central Asia and the origins and dispersal of arboreal crops, especially the pistachio.

Her current work looks at archaeobotanical studies of the medieval period in southwestern Central Asia, but she has also worked on Bronze Age material from Kyrgyzstan and trained at several sites across Europe and Turkey. She previously studied in Portugal (Universidade de Évora), Greece (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki), and Italy (Sapienza University of Rome).