Iran’s presidential and municipal elections will be held on May 19, raising many questions: What will be the fate of President Rouhani? What do the results tell us about the success of the nuclear deal? How did women and minorities perform in the election? And is change underway in Iran? MESF is gathering its members to answer these questions and discuss the election results.

Dr Rebecca Barlow (Chair)
Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh
Dr James Barry
Ms Azadeh Davachi

Tuesday May 23, 11:00am – 1:00pm
Level 2, Building BC, Deakin University Burwood campus

Please RSVP to mesf@deakin.edu.au by Wednesday May 17 for catering purposes

Download the flyer here.

Bios:

Professor Shahram Akbarzadeh is Research Professor in Middle East and Central Asian Politics at Deakin University and the Deputy Director (International) of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. He held a prestigious ARC Future Fellowship (2012-2016) on the Role of Islam in Iran’s Foreign Policy-making and recently completed a grant on Sectarianism in the Middle East from the Qatar Foundation.

Dr Rebecca Barlow is a Senior Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. Rebecca is the author of Universal Women’s Human Rights and the Muslim Question: Iran’s One Million Signatures Campaign (Melbourne University Publishing, 2012). In 2007 Rebecca was one of only four early career researchers selected globally to rapporteur at the Nobel Women’s Initiative’s first international conference Women Redefining Peace in the Middle East and Beyond. Rebecca has worked for the Gender, Culture & Human Rights Branch of the United Nations Population Fund, where she was part of a team that implemented the United Nations Global Forum of Faith-based Organisations in Population and Development.

Dr James Barry is an Associate Research Fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. He was awarded a PhD (anthropology) from Monash University in 2013 for his dissertation on cross generation identity among the religious minorities in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is currently involved in research on the role of Islam in Iranian foreign policy making, alongside a project on decision-making among Iranian and Afghan migrants in Indonesia.

Azadeh Davachi is a women’s rights activist and researcher at Deakin University. Azadeh’s work is frequently published in Eureka Street, BBC Persian, Radio Zamaneh and The Feminist School. She has a MA from University Putra in Malaysia and is the author of the scholarly book ‘Feminism, The Women’s Movement and its Challenges in Iran’ and two volumes of poetry, ‘A Butterfly is on its way’ and ‘The Narration of my Pictures’ (all in Persian).