Simin Fadaee

Simin received her PhD from Albert-Ludwigs University of Freiburg in Germany (2009) where she also completed a Master's (2006). During her master's programme she spent semesters at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, India and prior to that obtained a BA from the University of Tehran, Iran. She worked at Humboldt University of Berlin for several years and held a research fellowship at the University of Sheffield before joining the University of Manchester in January 2018. Her books include: Social Movements in Iran: Environmentalism and Civil Society (Author, Routledge 2012), Understanding Southern Social Movements (Editor, Routledge 2016), Contemporary Megaprojects: Organization, Vision and Resistance in the 21st Century (Co-editor, Berghahn 2021) and Marxism, Religion and Emancipatory Politics (Co-editor, Palgrave-Macmillan 2022). She serves as a board member of the Research Committee on Social Classes and Social Movements (RC47) of the International Sociological Association (ISA). In Manchester she works with the research group Movements@Manchester and the Sustainable Consumption Institute and is a member of the Manchester University Press Editorial Committee.  

Theorethically my research is situated in debates surrounding the Northern-centric essence of sociology, and the extent to which theories, concepts and practices can travel across the North-South divide. My empirical focus is broadly on issues of political sociology, social movements and activism, environmentalism and environmental politics and I have conducted research in a number of places but mostly in Iran, India and Germany. Most of my research is informed by response to contemporary world politics and in depth empirical fieldwork.

I am keen to supervise research students in the above mentioned areas.