Hello and welcome –
I am a sociologist interested in questions at the intersection of political, economic, and comparative-historical sociology. I use both qualitative and quantitative methods in my research on social movements, development, and state-making in the global South.
I’m a currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, Princeton University. You can learn more about my work by clicking on the Research tab above, or here.
I’ve published at scholarly journals including Development and Change, the Journal of Agrarian Change, Middle Eastern Studies, Mediterranean Politics, Iranian Studies, and the New Left Review. More publicly, I’ve written for magazines and newspapers like Phenomenal World, Foreign Policy, Al Monitor, Sharq, the WP’s Monkey Cage, Jadaliyya, and the Financial Times. My work has also received attention from news outlets like CNN, The Washington Post, Keyhan, and Jacobin. In 2021-22, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Bourse and Bazaar Foundation.
I got my PhD in Sociology from UCLA. Before moving to the West Coast, I lived in Iran for several years, where I studied at the University of Tehran and worked as a journalist for a local financial newspaper. I received my BA in Economics from SOAS.
Postdoctoral Research Associate, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies
Princeton University
2-S-2 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544
zepkalb at princeton dot edu