Professor Nacim Pak-Shiraz

Sabbatical Fellow

Professor Nacim Pak-Shiraz

Sabbatical Fellow, August – December 2024

Home Institution: University of Edinburgh, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures 

Professor Nacim Pak-Shiraz holds the Personal Chair of Cinema and Iran at the University of Edinburgh, specialising in research on Islam, gender, and visual culture in the Middle East, with a particular focus on Iran. Her works include Shi‘i Islam and Iranian Cinema: Religion and Spirituality in Film (2011) and (as editor) Visualizing Iran: From Antiquity to the Present (2017). In addition to her academic work, Professor Pak-Shiraz is a film festival curator and has served as a jury member and speaker at numerous international film festivals.

Project title: Freedom of Movement: A Cinematic Analysis of Gender and Space in Iranian Culture

Who gets access to which spaces, and why, remains globally contentious. How does gender continue to facilitate or hinder freedom of movement in public and private spaces? How has cinema engaged with these questions, enabling us to study both the gendered rules on space, and their defiance? Through the study of Iranian films made between 2000-2022, my research project will analyse the social process by which boundaries are defined, maintained, and transgressed in contemporary Iran. The research will further our understanding of freedom of movement vis-à-vis gender-based restrictions and the role of visual culture in creating alternative spaces to debate social and political issues.