Nayereh Tohidi Ph.D. Iranian Researcher & activist

Nayereh  Tohidi (Persian: نیره توحیدی; born 1951) is an Iranian-born American professor, researcher, and academic administrator. Tohidi is a professor emerita and former Chair of Gender and Women’s Studies Department, and the founding director of the Middle Eastern and Islamic studies (from 2011 to 2021) at California State University, Northridge.

She is also a research associate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she has  been  coordinating the Bilingual Lecture Series on Iran since 2003.

Career

Her teaching and research areas include sociology of gender,women’s rights, religion (Islam), ethnicity and democracy in the Middle East and post-Soviet Central Eurasia, especially Iran and Azerbaijan.She is the recipient of several grants, fellowships and research awards, including a year of Fulbright lectureship and research at the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan; post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard University;^[7] the Hoover Institute of Stanford University; the Kennan Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; and the Keddie-Balzan Fellowship at the Center for Near Eastern Studies at UCLA.

She has held visiting positions at the University of Iowa, the University of Minnesota, Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the University of Southern California (USC). In 2011, she was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to develop and launch a program for students to earn minor in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in California State University, Northridge.

Tohidi’s extensive publications include editorship or authorship of Globalization, Gender and Religion: The Politics of Women’s Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts; Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity within Unity; and Feminism, Democracy and Islamism in Iran. Her work has appeared in several academic and policy-related journals such as Psychologof Sex Roles; Feminist Studies in Religion; Social Research; Middles East Studies Association; Iranian Studies; Nimeye Digar; Azadi Andisheh; Iran Nameh; Rahavard; and Ms. magazine.

Education

• Ph.D., Educational Psychology (Socio-Cultural Perspectives), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 1983
• MA, Educational Psychology (Human Development), University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, 1979
• BS, Psychology (Major), Sociology (Minor), University of Tehran, Iran, 1975
• Teacher Training Credential, California State University, Northridge, 1984 to 1986

Publications

Books

• Feminism, Demokracy ve Islamgarayi (English: Feminism, Democracy and Islamism in Iran) (1996) [in Persian] (Los Angeles, CA: Ketab Sara Co., 1996; reprinted in Iran, 1998).

• Bodman, Herbert L.; Tohidi, Nayereh, eds. (1998). Women in Muslim Societies: Diversity within Unity. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 9781555875787.
• Tohidi, Nayereh; Bayes, Jane, eds. (2011). Globalization, Religion, and Gender: the Politics of Women’s Rights in Catholic and Muslim Contexts. New York City, NY: Palgrave. ISBN 9780333947043.

Selected articles