Doctoral Students
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.
Murad is a PhD student in history at Brandeis. Her current research focuses on the transition away from traditional Islamic historiography in the 19th-century Levant and the historiography of al-nahḍa in relation to the historical fiction of Jurji Zaydan and his contemporaries. She is interested in the pedagogical aspects and socio-political characteristics of nahḍa intellectualism as well as in the competing historical claims over national and religious identities emergent during the same period. Murad holds a joint MA in Near Eastern and Judaic studies and conflict and coexistence studies from Brandeis.