Iran: A Movement for “Women, Life, Freedom”

How can we understand Iran’s “Women, Life, Freedom”, the extraordinary political uprising that emerged following the death of the Kurdish Mahsa Zhina Amini in September 2022 in the police custody? This is neither a “feminist revolution” per se, nor simply the revolt of the new generation, nor merely about mandatory hijab. This is a movement to reclaim life, a struggle to liberate free and dignified existence from an internal colonization. As the primary objects of this colonization, women have become the protagonists of a movement that may set the Islamic Republic on a revolutionary course.

The lecture will be followed by a conversation with Ass. Prof. Kristin Soraya Batmangelichi, and a plenary discussion. The event is free, and open to all.


Asef Bayat, is Professor of Sociology, and Catherine & Bruce Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Before joining Illinois, he taught at the American University in Cairo for many years; and served as the director of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM) holding the Chair of Society and Culture of the Modern Middle East at Leiden University, The Netherlands.

His research areas range from social movements and social change to religion and public life, urban space and politics, and contemporary Middle East. His recent books include Being Young and Muslim: Cultural Politics in the Global South and North (ed. with Linda Herrera) (Oxford University Press, 2010); Post-Islamism: The Changing Faces of Political Islam (Oxford University Press, 2013); Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2013. 2^nd edition), Revolution without Revolutionaries: Making Sense of the Arab Spring (Stanford University Press, 2017), Global Middle East: Into the 21^st Century (ed. With Linda Herrera) (University of California Press, 2021), and Revolutionary Life: The Everyday of the Arab Spring (Harvard University Press, 2021).

K. Soraya Batmanghelichi is Associate Professor for the Study of Modern Iran at UiO and the author of Revolutionary Bodies: Technologies of Gender, Sex, and Self in Contemporary Iran. A feminist scholar and activist, she researches women's movements, sexuality, gendered public space, and more recently golden visa investment programs in Iran and the modern Middle East.