Doctoral Students
Sevinç Doğan is an ethnographer whose recent research focuses on the institutionalization of end-of-life care and religious bioethics. At the intersection of medicine, ethics and religion, her project explores how the regime in Turkey affects the everyday lives of ordinary people around concrete issues of illness, care, and death. Her master's thesis, based on ethnographic research in an underclass-religious neighborhood, examines the grassroots mobilization of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey. Her first book, Mahalledeki AKP (Justice and Development Party in the Neighbourhood), was published in 2016, received the Yunus Nadi Social Sciences Award in 2017, and is now in its fifth edition. She was previously a doctoral candidate in the Sociology Department at Koç University.
Geshnizjani is a PhD student in history at Brandeis. He holds a PhD in political sociology from Tarbiat Modares University in Iran. In his previous PhD dissertation, which forms the foundation of his forthcoming book titled Victory and Defeat of the Islamists: A Comparative Analysis of Iran and Egypt, Kamran conducted a comparative-historical analysis of the Iranian 1978-79 and Egyptian 2011-2013 revolutions, aiming to examine the historical conditions that impact the dominance of Islamist movements during revolutionary situations. He is interested in the political history and political sociology of the Middle Eastern and North African countries, primarily focusing on the revolutionary and protest movements within this region.
Han is a PhD candidate in anthropology at Brandeis University. Her research focuses on the experiences of Baloch women in the United Arab Emirates, examining themes of migration and belonging through aesthetics. With a background in ethnographic research, Han is interested in how categories of class, gender, and citizenship are navigated aesthetically, particularly in experiences of precarity and ambiguity. She holds an MA in sociocultural anthropology from Columbia University and a BA from Wheaton College.
Kaleem is a PhD student in the Department of Anthropology. His work looks at the social life of oil in Doha and its entanglements with the issues of gender and masculinity. Kaleem has spent nearly two years doing ethnographic fieldwork in Qatar and holds a Bsc in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.
Ziari is a PhD student in sociology at Brandeis University. Before starting her doctoral studies, she earned an MA in sociology and was a visiting researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in 2017. She later served as Executive Editor of the Journal of Family Research in Iran (2017–2023). Her research examines the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion in the everyday lives of women in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran. She co-authored “Sexuality and Concealment Among Iranian Young Women,” drawn from her MA thesis and published in Sexualities (2020).