Book talk: Paths Made by Walking
15 April 2025, 5:00 pm–7:00 pm

Join the Middle East Research Centre in welcoming author Amina Tawasil for this book talk on 'Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran"
Event Information
Open to
- All
Availability
- Yes
Organiser
-
Institute of Advanced Studies
Location
-
IAS Common GroundG11, ground floor, South WingUCL, Gower St, LondonWC1E 6BTUnited Kingdom
ABOUT THE BOOK
Paths Made by Walking: The Work of Howzevi Women in Iran
Author: Amina Tawasil
This open access book provides insight into these questions by examining how Iranian women have participated in Islamic education since the 1979 revolution. This groundbreaking ethnography on Iranian howzevi (seminarian) women reveals how ideologies of womanhood, institutions, and Islamic practices have played a pivotal role in religiously conservative women's mobility in the Middle East. Applying over a year of ethnographic fieldwork, Amina Tawasil analyzes how the Islamic education of seminarian women has propelled some of them into powerful positions in Iran, from close ties with the state's supreme leader and chief justice to membership in the Basij (voluntary military organization). At the same time, these women often choose to remain "hidden" or to otherwise follow practices that seem inscrutable or illogical from a framework of politicized resistance."
Published by Indiana University Press. Click here for more information.
ABOUT THE EVENT
Amina will be joined by Fatemeh Sadeghi to discuss the book.
All welcome. Registration will open soon.
This book launch is organised by the Middle East Research Centre (MERC). The centre provides a focal point for in-depth research on the Middle East and North Africa at UCL. It promotes research and teaching related to the region and its intersection with the wider world, from antiquity to the present. The Centre brings together experts across several disciplines and departments, and serves as a vital hub for researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students with an interest in the Middle East and North Africa.
About the Speakers
Amina Tawasil
Lecturer at Teachers College, Columbia University
Research: (specific to Middle East) women’s mobility; women’s Islamic education; gender, (specific to urban spaces): graffiti, gentrification
General Interests: notions of slow work; performance; affect; apprenticeship as education; oral history; storytelling; labor migration
More about Amina TawasilFatemeh Sadeghi
Senior Research Fellow at UCL Institute for Global Prosperity
Fatemeh Sadeghi is a political scientist specialising in political thought and imagination, gender and politics, feminist theories, and Law and constitutionalism in the Middle East. Her research focuses on decolonizing political thought and feminist theories in the Global South, particularly in Iran and Afghanistan. As a political scientist, she studies how Islamic theology and law are used for sociopolitical constructions and piety theories and practices.
More about Fatemeh Sadeghi