Email: niyousha.bastani@utoronto.ca
Biography:
Niyousha Bastani is a postdoctoral scholar, with research interests focused on the overlapping histories and politics of: psychology, race, anti-Muslim racism (particularly in the UK), and education. Especially through engagement with the political thought of Sylvia Wynter, her work questions how these histories and politics shape racial understandings of being human. She is currently working on her first monograph, based on ethnographic research on psychological and educational approaches to counter-extremism in the UK. Her next research project looks at global usages of psychology for articulating anti-imperial resistance, especially in Iran in the 1960s-80s. She is also interested in current uses of digital technologies for political rule, especially in the UK, and has contributed to collective research on this topic for the group No Tech for Tyrants.
Her current post supports an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on “Evasion: Thinking the Underside of Surveillance”, with the Evasion Lab. Prior to this, she was Assistant Professor at the Centre of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge.
She received her PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge, and was the recipient of a SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship. She was formerly Editor in Chief at the Cambridge Review of International Affairs.
Publications:
Peer-reviewed
Bastani, Niyousha and Lorena Gazzotti (2021) “‘Still a bit uncomfortable, to be an arm of the
state’: Making sense and subjects of counter-extremism in the UK and Morocco.” Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. doi.org/10.1177/23996544211031914
Bastani, Niyousha (2020) “Education is the humanitarian’s burden: development and Iranian
women’s memoirs.” Cultural Critique 109:64-94. doi.org/10.5749/culturalcritique.109.2020.0064
Other writing
Bastani, Niyousha (2021) “The Intimacies of Surveillance.” The Long View, Islamic Human Rights Commission
Bastani, Niyousha (2020). “Over-representing Whiteness: On Educational Tactics.” The Sociological Review (Blog). doi.org/10.51428/tsr.floc8849