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Zuzanna Olszewska

DPhil in Social Anthropology

Academic Profile

Zuzanna Olszewska is Associated Professor in the Social Anthropology of the Middle East at the University of Oxford. She specialises in the ethnography of Iran and the Afghan diaspora, as well as subjectivity, self-formation, and cultural production. She is the author of The Pearl of Dari: Poetry and Personhood among Young Afghans in Iran (Indiana University Press, 2015), numerous articles on Afghans in Iran and beyond, and translations of Afghan poetry. She is currently undertaking a digital ethnography of social media use in the global Afghan diaspora and its affective relationship with the crystallization of Afghan national or other identities, and discourses about women’s and minority rights.

Sample Publications

2015, The Pearl of Dari: Poetry and Personhood among Young Afghans in Iran. Bloomington: IUP 2013, ‘Classy Kids and Down-at-Heel Intellectuals: Status Aspiration and Blind Spots in the Contemporary Ethnography of Iran’, Iranian Studies 46 (6), 2013.

Current Position

Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of the Middle East, University of Oxford