People

ADVISORY COMMITTEE

SHAHLA HAERI
PhD, University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) 
CAS, Certificate of Advanced Studies, Harvard Graduate School of Education 
MA, Northeastern University 
BA, University of Massachusetts, Boston

Shahla Haeri is director of Women's Studies Program and Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Boston University. Trained as a cultural anthropologist with specific focus on law and religion, Haeri has conducted ethnographic research in Iran, Pakistan, and India. Her ongoing intellectual and academic interests converge on the evolving yet contentious relationship between religion, law, gender, and the state of the Muslim world in general, particularly in Iran since the revolution of 1979. She is the author of Law of Desire: Temporary Marriage, Mut'a, in Iran (Syracuse University Press, 1989, 2006 4th pt.) and No Shame for the Sun: Lives of Professional Pakistani Women (Syracuse University Press, 2001). She was involved in the University of Chicago's multi-year program on global fundamentalism, The Fundamentalism Project, which was funded by a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Grant, and contributed the article "Obedience Versus Autonomy: Women & Fundamentalism in Iran & Pakistan" in the second volume of Fundamentalisms and Society (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

She has been awarded several grants and postdoctoral fellowships, including: Colorado Scholar at the Women's Studies in Religion Program at HDS (2005-06); Senior Research Fellowships in the Humanities at Boston University (2008-09); Fulbright (1999-2000, 2002-03); St. Anthony's College, Oxford University (1996); American Institute of Pakistan Studies, (1991-92); Social Science Research Council (1987-88); Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women, Brown University (1986-87); Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University (1985-86).

Dr. Haeri made a short video documentary, Mrs. President: Women and Political Leadership in Iran (2002), which focuses on six women presidential contenders in Iran. Going against the grain, "Mrs. President" addresses the anomaly of under representation or "invisibility" of professional, educated, middle or upper-middle class Muslim women in the media as well as the growing literature on women from the Muslim world.