About

Narges Bajoghli is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She is a writer, scholar, and public intellectual whose work explores the intersections of revolutions, media, and war in global politics. Bajoghli co-directs the Rethinking Iran Initiative and leads Parallax: The Human Stories Lab, a space dedicated to ethnographic research, storytelling, and multimedia engagement. Her research has received recognition for its groundbreaking ethnographic insights into the politics of media and military institutions in Iran. Her first book, Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic, was awarded the Margaret Mead Book Award. Her subsequent works include How Sanctions Work in Iran, which provides an on-the-ground analysis of the social and economic impacts of sanctions, and her forthcoming book, Workshop of War, which traces the legacy of chemical weapons from the Iran-Iraq War to the present, highlighting the Middle East as a laboratory for global military experimentation. Bajoghli’s work has been supported by various prestigious organizations, and her research has been published in outlets such as Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Vanity Fair. In addition to her scholarly work, Bajoghli is a trained visual anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. She directed The Skin That Burns, a film about survivors of chemical warfare in Iran, and created the graphic novella Sanctioned Lives, which visualizes oral histories of life under sanctions. As an educator, she has received multiple teaching awards and is committed to mentoring future global thinkers and bridging scholarly research with public discourse through innovative, transmedia approaches.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Economic geography
• Gender studies
• Geography
• Political economy
• Law

Selected publications

• Becoming cultural and disability activists who challenge dominant narratives: The parallax effect of survivors of chemical warfare in Iran

  Visual Anthropology Review · 2024-09-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article discusses how Faye Ginsburg's work on ethnographic filmmaking, cultural activism, disability studies, and the parallax effect inspired me to collaborate over two decades with survivors of chemical warfare in Iran and Iraq. In order to continue to advocate for their needs for subsidized medical treatment, survivors of chemical weapons in Iran took up disability rights and carved out an important spaces as cultural activists to advocate for peace over war. Their creation of the Tehran Peace Museum and the many attendant media products it has produced, serve as an important parallax effect that has been instrumental in making critical dents into the extremely well‐funded state produced media about the war in Iran.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Legacies of Protest Art in Iran

  Public Culture · 2024-05-01

  articleSenior author

  Abstract This article examines the art practice of a group of professors and students—who later came to be known as Group 57—at the Fine Arts College of the University of Tehran during the revolutionary period of 1978 to 1980. Through interviews with artists and art historical research, the authors describe the artists’ workshop where they produced posters against the Shah, the United States, and imperialism. Their posters drew on the bold colors, clear text, symbolic imagery, and easy reproducibility of international radical poster art and the early Russian revolutionary avant-garde. The authors recover these aesthetic and intellectual connections in the academic and professional training of the artists and in the art historical context of the posters themselves, examining the posters’ recent and more distant influences, and reinscribing the artists in the history of Iranian art and international art history. The authors also point toward connections between Group 57 and protest art in Iran today.

  PublisherDOI

• Social Movements, Power, and Mediated Visibility

  Annual Review of Anthropology · 2023 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  This article focuses on how the anthropological study of media—through an examination of its production, circulation, and consumption—elucidates issues of social organization, political economy, and alternative visions for political futures. By bringing together the studies of visual media, social movements, and hegemonic power by anthropologists and ethnographers of media since the turn of the twenty-first century, this review article provides a critical understanding of research about our current media environment, where scholarship within anthropology is heading in these domains, and what looking at these three fields together can mean for a more robust understanding of our political, social, and cultural futures.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The perils of producing revolutionary moderation: entertainment, style, and the ‘Islamic Che’ in Iran

  Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute · 2023-10-11 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract What makes revolutionary media ‘moderate’, and why would a revolutionary state produce moderation? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with pro‐regime media producers in Iran, this article examines the attempted creation of a new revolutionary hero, an ‘Islamic Che’, who appeals to younger audiences by creating a moderate style. Iran's regime media makers seek to attract not just youth who protest against the Islamic Republic, but their own children: those they imagined would be their automatic base of support. How do revolutionary states cultivate a base among a new generation willing to defend the existing political structure? This article examines how state media makers imagine ‘moderate style’ as that which can both stay true to the founding principles and be entertaining enough for younger generations. Beyond the example of post‐revolutionary Iran, this article also allows us to think more about the predicament of all states: namely how do they attempt to attract the attention of citizens in a world inundated with easy‐to‐access digital content?

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: Studying the Impacts of Economic Sanctions in Iran: Everyday Life, Power, and Foreign Policy

  Humanity · 2023-06-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract: Based on fieldwork over ten years in Iran and Cuba, this article follows the myriad political, economic, and cultural, relationships developed between Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba since 2008, as a direct challenge to U.S. sanctions on all three countries. What can we learn about U.S. sanctions when we look at the lived experiences of those both coping with and defying U.S. sanctions in three of the main targeted societies? What do these alliances of sanctions busting show us about the limits of U.S. sanctions, and about the further entrenchment of power by those at the forefront of political and military power in each of their respective states? This article explores the micro-social relations of those who have solidified this alliance, and explores what "sanctions busting" and building "resistance economies" mean for humanitarian and development issues.

  PublisherDOI

• Decolonizing Transnational Feminism

  Journal of Middle East Women s Studies · 2023 · 7 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  Abstract This article analyzes the Afghan and Iranian feminist uprisings of the early 2020s spurred by #MahsaAmini’s death and the return of the Taliban, and their predecessors, #MyRedLine and #MyStealthyFreedom. It assesses why these movements, which gained international traction and a huge global online and offline presence, are no longer in the mainstream media spotlight. The article examines the efficacy and dangers of these feminist movements, which attempt to redress the tide of Islamist ideology in both countries by building solidarity with international governmental and nongovernmental human rights organizations. It also highlights how Afghan and Iranian women’s activism is selectively recognized and appropriated by neo-imperial agendas and provides strategies for decolonization. Finally, the article argues that #MahsaAmini and #MyRedLine are exemplary instances of feminist transnational collaboration and global mobilization for women’s rights, whereas #MyStealthyFreedom and the lack of coverage of the Afghan women’s right uprising since Taliban 2.0 fall into the paradigm of imperial feminism.

  PublisherDOI

• Iran in Latin America: Building Alliances for Busting Economic Sanctions

  Humanity · 2023-06-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract: Based on fieldwork over ten years in Iran and Cuba, this article follows the myriad political, economic, and cultural, relationships developed between Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba since 2008, as a direct challenge to U.S. sanctions on all three countries. What can we learn about U.S. sanctions when we look at the lived experiences of those both coping with and defying U.S. sanctions in three of the main targeted societies? What do these alliances of sanctions busting show us about the limits of U.S. sanctions, and about the further entrenchment of power by those at the forefront of political and military power in each of their respective states? This article explores the micro-social relations of those who have solidified this alliance, and explores what "sanctions busting" and building "resistance economies" mean for humanitarian and development issues.

  PublisherDOI

• Television and the Afghan Culture Wars: Brought to you by Foreigners, Warlords, and ActivistsByWazhmahOsman.Urbana:University of Illinois Press.2020

  Visual Anthropology Review · 2022-03-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Iran Reframed

  Stanford University Press eBooks · 2020 · 52 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science

  An inside look at what it means to be pro-regime in Iran, and the debates around the future of the Islamic Republic. More than half of Iran's citizens were not alive at the time of the 1979 Revolution. Now entering its fifth decade in power, the Iranian regime faces the paradox of any successful revolution: how to transmit the commitments of its political project to the next generation. New media ventures supported by the Islamic Republic attempt to win the hearts and minds of younger Iranians. Yet members of this new generation—whether dissidents or fundamentalists—are increasingly skeptical of these efforts. Iran Reframed offers unprecedented access to those who wield power in Iran as they debate and define the future of the Republic. Over ten years, Narges Bajoghli met with men in Iran's Revolutionary Guard, Ansar Hezbollah, and Basij paramilitary organizations to investigate how their media producers developed strategies to court Iranian youth. Readers come to know these men—what the regime means to them and their anxieties about the future of their revolutionary project. Contestation over how to define the regime underlies all their efforts to communicate with the public. This book offers a multilayered story about what it means to be pro-regime in the Islamic Republic, challenging everything we think we know about Iran and revolution.

  PublisherDOI

• Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic

  2019-09-24 · 117 citations

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Amir Moosavi

  2 shared

• Niloofar Haeri

  1 shared

• Wazhmah Osman

  1 shared

• Anne Eakin Moss

  1 shared

• Arang Keshavarzian

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Margaret Mead Book Award