Kiana Karimi is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies and a doctoral fellow at the Urban Democracy Lab at New York University. Her dissertation research focuses on the micropolitics of everyday life and the performance of gender in Iran. Her research interests include digital humanities, gender politics, the performance of everyday life, performance philosophy, immigration and transnational identity, and the Iranian diaspora. She has directed a series of digital publications for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) and has moderated and taught online workshops for women in small towns in Iran about tools and techniques for participation in the city council elections. Combining her background in engineering, web design and her decade-long experience as a women’s rights activist, she has developed the first-ever eyewitness reporting and networking platform for Farsi speakers (TribuneZamaneh.com) as an alternative to commercial and insecure platforms such as Facebook. As part of Barzan Gender in Translation Program, she has translated over 30 journal papers from English to Farsi in an accessible language for grassroots activists. For her fellowship at the Urban Democracy Lab, she is developing a digital archive to showcase the music and musicians of the Bronx for the Bronx Music Heritage Center. Her writings have been published the London Review of Books blog, Women Learning Partnership, RadioZamaneh (fa) and We Change (fa) among other outlets.

Why PS @ NYU?

I came to NYU to pursue an interdisciplinary Masters degree in gender studies and middle eastern studies after years of working as a women's rights activist for Iran. But in my first year, I took a class called "performance of identity" with artist and professor Anna Deveare Smith, and it completely transformed my thinking about gender, as well as identity, power, and nationality. To put it simply, I realized that I was a liberated feminist in my thinking, but quite oppressed and profoundly gendered in my body and movement. I became very curious to the understand the body, embodiment and the performance of identity. The performance studies department is the absolutely best place for that. It has given me not just new knowledge, but a new way of knowing, one that critically pays attention to the senses, feelings, affect, movements and vibrations. Everything is politicized in the department, and nothing is sacred. Here I feel boundless in my thinking/feeling and my research.