(Gender) Politics in the Field: The Precarities of Diasporic (Women) Scholars of Iranian Politics during and after the ‘Woman, Life, Freedom’ Uprising

Abstract

had the privilege of co-organizing a panel titled "Women's Resistance, Resilience, and Trauma in Iran: Trajectories, Memories, and Mobilizations." In this panel, I shared initial insights from my project, "The WLF Uprising in Iran: Women's Activism and the Shifting Grounds of Religion." After the panel ended and as we were exchanging thoughts on it with the other three panelists, we were informed by a venue organizer that an individual associated with the Iranian embassy in the Netherlands had attended our session and photographed all of us-four women scholars-during our presentations, only to leave before the session concluded. I stepped out of the conference room quickly and attempted to find this person in the main hall to confront them and inquire about their motives, but they had already left the venue.Reflecting on the incident after the conference, I contemplated the broader implications for scholars researching sensitive subjects related to Iran, especially those who do not share my privilege of having dual Iranian-European nationality. This privilege shields me from the stresses of visa renewals and deportation risks that other scholars from the Global South have to deal with (see testimonials of this in Burlyuk and Rahbari 2023). I have also come to terms with the fact that I may never visit my birth country again, as long as the current regime is in power, as I may face persecution and imprisonment because of my academic work. However, for Iranian scholars holding only Iranian nationality, incidents such as the one we experienced in the conference room could be deeply distressing and may discourage them from practicing their academic freedom and influence their disciplinary approaches and the research topics they choose to pursue.