Biography
Soodeh Mansouri (She/her) is a Ph.D. student in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, with a graduate minor in Women and Gender in global perspective. Her research focuses on social movements, gender, and women’s activism in MENA, particularly in Iran and Tunisia. She is especially interested in studying forms of social resistance and women’s movements, with prior research examining women’s bodies as contested sites of power between competing political discourses. Drawing on mixed-methods approach, her work investigates the intersections of resistance, religion, and everyday life in transnational and comparative contexts.
She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an M.A. in Sociology from Tarbiat Modares University, and a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Tehran. She has conducted fieldwork in Iran, Iraq, and Tunisia.
Research Interests
- Social movements and social resistance
- Gender, politics, and everyday life
- Religion and politics
- Transnationalism and comparative sociology
Education
- Ph.D. in Sociology (in progress), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
- M.A. in Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara
- M.A. in Sociology, Tarbiat Modares University, Iran
- B.A. in Sociology, University of Tehran, Iran
Awards and Honors
- 2024 – The Emerging Scholar Award, The Institute of Religious Studies, Spain – Fourteenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society
- 2023 – Charles Wendell Memorial Award, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
Courses Taught
- Introduction to Sociology
- Sociology of Gender
- Religion and Society
- Sociology of Food
- Politics in the Middle East
- Modern Iran & Global Politics
- Introduction to Middle East Studies
- Modern World History
- Global Studies 1