Recorded: June 10, 2026
Woman, Life, Freedom in the Mirror of Scholarship: Responses from the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences
This presentation will survey scholarship in the arts, humanities, and social sciences responding to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising in Iran. Drawing on a bibliography of over one hundred publications—books, journal articles, and edited volume chapters published since the death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini in September 2022—it will outline four main thematic clusters: Chronologies, Culture, Aesthetics, and Nation. These will serve to map shifting interpretations of women’s emancipation, cultural change and resistance, visual activism, and national belonging. The presentation will also reflect on how to research a protest movement from exile and draw attention to under-cited sources, including scholarship produced in Iran.
Pooyan Tamimi Arab is Associate Professor of Secular and Religious Studies at Utrecht University, a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a member of GAMAAN—the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran. Between 2025 and 2030, he is the principal investigator of Iran’s Secular Shift, a mixed-methods project on non-religion and demands for political secularism funded by the Dutch Research Council.
Written scholarship by Dr. Arab that focuses on this theme may be found here.