Bilingual Lecture Series: Panel on Afghan Refugees in Iran

Panel on Afghan Refugees in Iran

January 12, 2026

11:00am Pacific Time

Online via Zoom

In Persian and English

Registration Required

Registration Link: https://ucla.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hcYEa8i_QB6EIvQRBb9YEw

Munazza Ebtikar

PANEL MODERATOR

Dr. Munazza Ebtikar recently completed her PhD (2025) in Politics, History, and Anthropology at the University of Oxford. She was a 2024-2025 Peace Fellow at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs and currently serves as Co-Principal Investigator of Stanford’s Sonic Resistance Archive, documenting Afghan cultural production. She holds an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford and completed her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley with degrees in Peace and Conflict, Middle Eastern Politics, and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures. Dr. Ebtikar is co-editing “Civil Resistance in Afghanistan” and brings multilingual research capabilities in Persian, Arabic, and Pashto to her work on Afghanistan’s contemporary political and cultural transformations.

Ashraf Haidari

Afghan Refugees in Iran: Precarious Protection, Forced Returns, and Pathways Forward

Ambassador Ashraf Haidari is a distinguished diplomat and humanitarian leader, serving as the Founder and President of Displaced International (DI). From 2018 to 2022, he was Afghanistan’s Ambassador to Sri Lanka and Director-General of the South Asia Cooperative Environment Program (SACEP), leading initiatives on regional security, economic cooperation, climate resilience, and sustainable development. At Afghanistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he held key roles, including Director-General of Policy and Strategy and Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires at the Afghan Embassies in Delhi and Washington, D.C. His leadership is deeply shaped by his personal journey as a former refugee. He earned a B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from Wabash College, followed by a Master’s in Security Studies at Georgetown University and a graduate certificate in Refugees, Migration, and Humanitarian Emergencies.

Mejgan Massoumi

Lives in Transit: Afghan Cultural Producers Navigating Precarity and Policing in Iran

Mejgan Massoumi is an Assistant Professor of History at Carnegie Mellon University. Her current book project examines the history of radio in Afghanistan, revealing how music and sound shaped politics, culture, and everyday life at the crossroads of Asia and the Middle East. Her research has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS), the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies (AIAS), and her dissertation received the World History Association’s 2023–24 Best Dissertation Prize. Dr. Massoumi earned her PhD in History from Stanford University in 2021. She also holds degrees in Architecture (B.A.) and City Planning (M.C.P.) from the University of California, Berkeley, grounding her scholarship in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective.

Mitra Naseh

Increasingly Restrictive Migration Policies for Afghans in Iran

Mitra Naseh is a forced migration scholar, currently serving as an Assistant Professor and the Founding Director of the Forced Migration Initiative (FMI) at the Brown School, Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses on the multidimensional social and economic integration of forcibly displaced populations, shaped by her interdisciplinary academic training, lived experience as an immigrant, and extensive fieldwork with non-governmental organizations and United Nations agencies, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia. She is the co-author of the widely recognized book Best Practices in Social Work with Refugees and Immigrants, published by Columbia University Press in 2019.

Zuzanna Olszewska

Beyond Dorr-e Dari: The Global Literary Ripples of a Pioneering Refugee Cultural Institution in Iran

Zuzanna Olszewska is Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of the Middle East at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford. She is an anthropologist with a particular interest in the literary and cultural production among the Afghan diaspora. She is author of award-winning monograph The Pearl of Dari: Poetry and Personhood among Young Afghans in Iran (Indiana University Press, 2015) and numerous articles. She is also a translator of Persian-language poetry from Afghanistan.