I teach the history of the modern Middle East and history of Iran.I received my PhD from University of California Santa Barbara in 2010, and joined the faculty of history at Northeastern Illinois University.

My first book was about the Iranian constitutional revolution and the clerical leadership of Akhund Khursani. It won the Best First Book Award of the History Honor Society in 2016. My second book, Iranian Women and Gender in the Iran-Iraq War (Syracuse UP, 2021) is a first in-depth look at how and why Iranian women participated in that conflict, and how in that process they challenged their gender roles that were dictated by the newly established Islamic Republic. I'm currently working on The Anthology of the Iranian Perspective on the Iran-Iraq War, a 15 chapter edited volume. Also, I'm co-authoring History of Iranian Women in Sports.

I am now professor the chair of the history department and serve as the Managing Editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica.

2015. "The Iranian Constitutional Revolution and the Clerical Leadership of Khurasani." Syracuse University Press. Win. 2009 "Interregional Rivalry Cloaked in Iraqi Arab Nationalism and Iranian Secular Nationalism and Shi‘ite Ideology," in International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies; Sum. 2007 "Shi‘i Ideology, Iranian Secular Nationalism, and the Iran-Iraq War (1980-88)," in Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, London School of Economics.

History of Iran and Iraq
History of the Constitutional Revolution
History of Women and Gender
World history

Chair and Professor, Northeastern Illinois University- Chicago