Nematollah Fazeli

Nematollah Fazeli, born 23 August 1964 in Arak, is an anthropologist, author, and researcher of contemporary Iranian culture. He is a retired professor at the Institute for Humanities and Cultural Studies and received his PhD in social anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Fazeli is one of the key figures in the development of cultural anthropology, cultural studies, ethnography, urban studies, and cultural history in Iran. In addition to his academic work, he has been prolific in the public sphere, connecting the social sciences to the everyday issues of Iranian society through numerous lectures, conversations, and notes.

Fazeli's work can be understood around several main research programs: contemporary Iranian culture, the Iranian experience of modernity, cultural problematics, cultural history, urban studies, education and the university, and the ethnography of everyday life.

In his view, contemporary Iran should not be seen merely as a "traditional" or "non-modern" society. Fazeli believes that Iranians have had a specific, indigenous experience of becoming modern—an experience manifested in the city, media, university, family, body, clothing, leisure, travel, happiness, and everyday life. His main project, therefore, is the description and analysis of the contemporary Iranian human being, not from above and purely theoretically, but through ethnography and attention to lived experience.