About
I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Washington. I study how ritual practices shape national belonging and interethnic solidarity across dominant and minority groups, with a comparative focus on Iran and Turkey. My dissertation, Veils of Belonging: Ritual, Identity, and Nationhood in the Modern Middle East, investigates when and how religious rituals are linked to national attachment, boundary-making, and cross-group cooperation. I use a mixed-methods design that combines archival and newspaper research, computational text analysis, and statistical modeling of multi-wave survey data.
My peer-reviewed article, “Making and Transcending Boundaries: The Effect of Ritual on Nationalism,” appeared in Theory and Society in 2024. I also contribute public scholarship on identity, protest, and environmental inequality, with essays and commentary for venues such as the Middle East Institute and The National Interest, as well as interviews with Voice of America and the BBC.
I teach courses in social theory, social movements, and research methods. At the University of Washington, I have served as Instructor of Record for Contemporary Social Movements, Introduction to Sociological Theory, and Sociology in Practice. I have also taught Classical Sociological Theories at Hofstra University, Global Social Movements at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Introduction to Sociology at Everett Community College.