
ABOUT
Orkideh Behrouzan is a medical doctor, medical anthropologist, and bilingual author and poet. As an academic and consultant, she combines her interdisciplinary expertise with two decades of experience in research and analysis, leadership, writing and public speaking, teaching, mentoring, and [interdisciplinary] degree programme and curricula design and implementation in the US and the UK. Behrouzan is the author of Prozak Diaries: Psychiatry and Generational Memory in Iran (2016, Stanford University Press), a 2021-22 Fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA), a 2015-16 fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), and the winner of the 2011 Kerr Award from the Middle Eastern Studies Association. She received her PhD in History and Anthropology of Science and Technology (HASTS) from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and currently teaches at the Department of Anthropology at SOAS, University of London. For more about her teaching and research, please click here.
Behrouzan contributes to several advisory boards and editorial collectives (including the Otherwise Magazine). In 2022, she joined the advising faculty at the Behavioural Sciences Consortium (BSC) of the Patient Centricity Division at Astellas.
BEYOND TRAUMA
Behrouzan is the founder of the Beyond Trauma Initiative. In 2014, she created the collaborative, multi-cited initiative Beyond ''Trauma': Emergent Agendas for Understanding Mental Health in the Middle East. This interdisciplinary project aims to bring together scholars, artists, practitioners, and policymaker, towards an inclusive approach to psychological wellbeing, by foregrounding the compelling role of diverse cultural practices, historical conditions, moral contexts, and medical pedagogies in shaping the afterlife of social ruptures. In light of today’s rapid transformations in the region and the movement of displaced individuals, the project responds to the pressing need for a cultural critique of dominant PTSD-focused paradigms in health practice and policy. Behrouzan launched the initiative with a 2014 Wellcome Trust funded international workshop, Beyond 'Trauma': Workshop on Emergent Agendas, followed by the publication of the 2015 Beyond Trauma Special Issue in Medicine, Anthropology, Theory. For more, please see: https://www.beyondtraumaproject.com
Academic Positions
2017-present. Associate Professor, SOAS University of London
2021-22 Fellow of the American Psychoanalytic Association (APsaA)
2020. Faculty Leave Fellow, Crown Centre for Middle East Studies, Brandeis University
2012-2017. Assistant Professor, Department of Global Health and Social Medicine, King’s College London
2015-2016. Fellow. American Council of Leanred Societies (ACLS)
2010-2012. Assistant Professor in Medical Anthropology, Institute for the Medical Humanities (IMH), University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB). Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Rice University (For more, click here)
2010. Ph.D., History and Anthropology of Science, Technology and Society (HASTS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
2008-2009. Social Science Research Council (SSRC) Fellow & Wenner Gren Fellow
2002-2005. Research Scholar in Molecular Genetics, Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Oxford
2004. UK Medical Board
2002. M.D., Faculty of Medicine, University of Tehran
EVENTS
The Lived Experience of COVID-19 in Iran. Harvard University Friday Morning Seminars. Harvard Anthropology. May 8, 2020
Iran's Response to the CoronaVirus Crisis: Webinar Q&A. Crown Centre for Middle East Studies, Brandies University. April 21, 2020
Workshop: Translating and Performing Short Stories From Iran, Bradford Literary Festival, UK, 2019
Bradford Literary Festival: The Iranian Zeitgeist, UK, 2019
Writing on the Wall Literary Festival: Tehran Now, UK, 2019
Barelit Literary Festival, London, 2019
"A Sensory Reading of Generational Memory in Iran" Lecture at Princeton. April 2019
Post Screening Talk: Poetry in Motion: Contemporary Iranian Cinema, Barbican Centre, London, 2019
Launch event for ‘The Book of Tehran’, Edinburgh, UK, 2019
TEDxUCLWomen Talk: Rethinking Mental Health and the Afterlife of War, London, 2018
Book Launch at SOAS, University of London, 2017
Book Launch at King's College London, 2016
Book Talk at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, 2016
Book Talk at Johns Hopkins University, 2016
Book Talk at Johns Hopkins University, 2016
Book Launch at New York University, 2016
Book Launch at University of California Berkeley, 2016
New in Middle East Studies: Medical Anthropology in Iran, 2016
Contact