Dr. Sana Chavoshian
Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
Email: Sana.Chavoshian(at)zmo.de
Aktuelles Forschungsgebiet:
My research focuses on war- and sanction-ecologies in Iran and Iraq, exploring how material and affective environments shape atmospheres and unsettle boundaries between religion, politics, and everyday life. I investigate how these landscapes of wars invoke, stage and orchestrate new forms of collective memory, dreamscape, and resistance through embodied experiences and sensory (olfactory, auratic and haptic) relations to the environment. By examining martyrdom, women dreams and rituals in their pious circles, and state politics in post-war Iran, my work reveals how religion and secularity are felt and lived beyond formal state scripts—through the atmospheres of breath, dust, and landscape in contested borderlands marked by war and sanctions.
Forschungsprojekt:
"Suspension: Dust-wind in Irans landscapes of war"
Positions
Education
Publications
Women, Martyrs, and Stones in Iran’s Post-War Politics
Edinburgh University Press, 2025
explores the haptic relationships that connect mothers and wives of fallen soldiers from the Iran–Iraq war (1980–88) to their martyrs, focusing on how material religion shapes these connections. This is a first book-length ethnographic account of practices and politics of Iran’s martyr-cult and its sites of military commemoration, focusing especially on women as the non/participants of war. It complements recent scholarly works on material mediation in religious life-worlds and their necro-sociality. I examine micro-objects and sensory practices as crucial sites of religious life and political meaning. The project challenges conventional binaries of devotion versus politics and resistance versus compliance, revealing how Shiʿi women engage with the invisibilities of war through material and affective practices. By shifting attention from inner belief to embodied, haptic experience, this work offers new insights into religion, gender, and state power in post-war Iran.
2025, "Suspension: Dust-Wind in Iran under Sanctions". Iranian Studies 58:2, 1-19. doi:10.1017/irn.2025.27
2025, “A Secular Atmosphere: The Work of Dust in Iran’s Landscapes of War”. Journal of Secular Studies 7:2, 302-325. doi:10.1163/25892525-bja10080
2024, “Affective Consanguinity: Blood, Mothers and Martyrs in the Iran-Iraq War”. In Shiʿi Materiality Beyond Karbala: Religion that Matters, eds. Yafa Shanneik, Fouad G. Marei, Christian Funke. Handbook of Oriental Studies 179: 157-181, Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004691377_007
2023, “In the Aura of the Prophet: Dreaming of Fatimah and Tropes of Connectedness in Iran’s Women Pious Circles”. In The Prophetic Piety in Islam: History and Anthropology, eds. Stefan Reichmuth, Rachida Chih, Nelly Amri. Handbook of Oriental Studies 159:3, 197-222, Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004522626_007
2022 (Co-authored with Monika Wohlrab-Sahr), “Werturteil und säkulare Wissenschaft: Grenzziehungen, Intrusionen und Positionierungen im Feld der islambezogenen Wissenschaften”. In Islam in Europa: Institutionalisierung und Konflikt, eds. Levent Tezcan, Monika Wohlrab-Sahr. Soziale Welt 25: 409-444. doi:10.5771/9783748931607
2021, "Military Hero to Martyr: crafting singularity and the formation of Muslim collective subjectivity in an Iranian statist ritual". Asiatische Studien, Vol. 3, 859-879.
2020, "Dream-realities: Materializing the Martyrs and Missing Soldiers of Iran-Iraq War". Religion and Society: Advances in Research 11:1, 149-165. (special section: Elsewhere Affects, eds. Hansjörg Dilger, Omar Kasmani, Nasima Selim, & Dominik Matte).
2019, "Secular Atmospheres: Unveiling and Urban Space in early 20th Century Iran". Historical Social Research, GESIS 44: 3, 180-205 (special issue: Islamicate Secularities in Past and Present, eds. Markus Dressler, Armando Salvatore & Monika Wohlrab-Sahr).
2018, "Challenges for Gender Equality: Women’s Religious Circles in Post-Revolutionary Iran". GENDER Journal for Gender, Culture and Society, 9: 3, 117-132.
2014, "Studying ‘Now-Time”: Constellation and Origin in Walter Benjamin's Methodology” Quarterly Journal of Social Sciences, Allameh Tabatabai University Publication, No. 65, 241-265.
2025, Contribution to the Book Forum for Munira Khayyat’s A Landscape of War: Resistance and Survival in Southern Lebanon (University of California Press). Conflict and Society 11:1
2024, Book Review: Emrah Yildiz, Zeinab’s Traffic: Moving Selves, Saints and Others Across Borders (University of California Press). American Ethnologist 52:1, 106-107. doi:10.1111/amet.13375
2023, Section: “Maintaining Secrets in Families Affected by War and Sanctions in Iran.” In Silence, Secrecy, Ignorance, and the Making of Class and Status across Generations. ZMO Pragmatic Text Series No.15
2023, Book Review: Nomi Stone, Pinelandia: An Anthropology and Field Poetry of War and Empire (University of California Press). Politics, Religion, and Ideology 24:2, 288-290. doi:10.1080/21567689.2023.2193445
2013, Book Translation (English-Persian): David Harris, Key Concepts in Leisure Studies, with Dr. M. Saeed Zokaei, Tehran: Tisa Publication
Organized Workshops and Panels
September 2025, Co-convenor of two-slot panel “Resistant Ecologies: Commoning and Repair in War-torn Environments across the Middle East” with Hilal Alkan, German Association of Social and Cultural Anthropology (DGSKA 2025), Cologne
July 2024, Co-convenor of panel “War Ecologies: Living with Deadly Environments in the Middle East” with Munira Khayyat (NYU), European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA 2024), Barcelona
July 2023, Co-convenor of panel “From Metaphor to Proxy: Military Knowledge and Warring Epistemologies in the Middle East,” Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (DGSKA 2023), Munich
June 2023, Co-convenor of international workshop “Un/Growing into Generational Roles,” ZMO research unit Age and Generation, Berlin
February 2023, Co-convenor of international workshop “Material and Generational Afterlives of Martyrdom,” with Jeroen Gunning and Younes Saramifar, International Society of Sociology of Religion (ISSR/SISR), Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam
July 2022, Co-convenor of panel “Salvaging Hope: Borderlands and Broken Ecologies in the Aftermath of Wars,” European Association of Social Anthropology (EASA 2022), Belfast
Podcast Episodes
January 2025, “A Mesopotamian Rhapsody: And Thou Wind Blow Our Memories in Thy Dust.” ZMO Kitchen Talks, Listen here
December 2022, “Kitsch” in Missed Encounters from the Field: Stories from the Researcher's Notebook, Object 2 Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient · Object 2: Sana Chavoshian
Memberships and Roles
Speaker of the Regional Group MENA, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozial- und Kulturanthropologie (DGSKA)
Languages
- English: professional fluency
- German: fluent
- Arabic: advanced
- Farsi: native speaker