Pardis Mahdavi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Pomona College and a consultant for the International Women’s Health Coalition. She received her Masters in International Affairs (MIA), Master of Arts and PhD from Columbia University in New York City. She is a trained medical anthropologist with a special interest in socio-cultural aspects of health and healing, gender, sexuality, and advocacy within anthropology. Her dissertation (2006) was on the intersection of sexuality and politics in post-revolutionary Iran, and is now a book entitled Passionate Uprisings: Iran’s Sexual Revolution. As part of her research for this book, Mahdavi visited Iran over a period of seven years, starting in 2000.
She has worked on projects involving questions of sexual rights and human rights, assisted reproductive technologies and emerging reproductive health changes, and a project on burlesque artists in New York City. She previously was editor-in-chief for Slant Magazine, as well as a consultant for the United Nations Population Fund, and has written for the Los Angeles Times Magazine.