Faculty Fellow, 2026 – 2027
Alireza Doostdar
Biography
Alireza Doostdar is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and the Anthropology of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School. A former schoolteacher with a background in electrical engineering, educational technology, and the anthropology of religion and STS, Doostdar has explored traditions of reasoning that enfold religious and scientific modes of inquiry, and the vicissitudes of postcolonial and postrevolutionary knowledge production. He has studied Iranian universities as sites for competing revolutionary aspirations (Islamist, Marxist, nationalist) and is interested in understanding the paradoxical role of educational institutions built for reproducing state power that may yet sometimes allow struggles for liberatory education to flourish.
Project
