Narges Bajoghli

Narges Bajoghli (pronounced: Nar-guess Baa-jogh-lee) is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University. She is an award-winning anthropologist, filmmaker, and writer.

Professor Bajoghli’s academic research is at the intersections of media and power. Her first project focused on regime cultural producers in Iran, and was based on ethnographic research with Basij, Ansar-e Hezbollah, and Revolutionary Guard media producers. The resulting book, "Iran Reframed: Anxieties of Power in the Islamic Republic" (Stanford University Press 2019) was awarded the 2020 Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology. 

Professor Bajoghli’s academic research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, the National Science Foundation (awarded/declined), The Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the American Institute of Iranian Studies, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, and Brown University.  

Professor Bajoghli received her PhD in socio-cultural anthropology from New York University, where her dissertation was awarded the Dean's Outstanding Dissertation Award in the Social Sciences. She was also trained as a documentary filmmaker in NYU's Culture and Media Program and NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. 

Professor Bajoghli is currently working on her second book project on the history of chemical weapons usage in the Iran-Iraq war, and the long-term effects of exposure on survivors. In addition, she is developing a research and film project on the production of U.S. news on Iran since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. She is also the recipient, along with Professors Niloofar Haeri and Anne Eakin Moss (JHU), of the Discovery Award. Their project looks at the arts of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

In addition to her academic writing, Professor Bajoghli has also written for such publications as The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, Foreign Affairs, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, and Jacobin. She has also appeared as a guest commentator on Iranian politics on CNN, DemocracyNow!, NPR, BBC WorldService, BBC NewsHour, and PBS NewsHour as well as in Spanish on radio across Latin America.