MOJTABA MAHDAVI

Mojtaba Mahdavi is Professor of Political Science and the ECMC Chair in Islamic Studies at the University of Alberta, Canada. He is the author and editor of numerous works on post-Islamism, contemporary social movements, and democratization in the Middle East and North Africa, postrevolutionary Iran, and modern Islamic political thought. He is the editor of The Myth of Middle East Exceptionalism: Unfinished Social Movements (Syracuse University Press, 2023); the co-editor of Rethinking China, the Middle East and Asia in a 'Multiplex World (Brill, 2022); and Towards the Dignity of Difference: Neither End of History nor Clash of Civilizations (Routledge, 2012). He is also the guest editor of The Many Faces of Contemporary Post-Islamism – Journal of Religions (2021); and Contemporary Social Movements in the Middle East and Beyond – Journal of Sociology of Islam (2014). Dr. Mahdavi is currently working on the following book projects: Ali Shariati and Beyond: Imagining Ethical Democratic Socialism in Muslim Contexts; Towards a Progressive Post-Islamism: Neo-Shariati Discourse in Postrevolutionary Iran; and Iran: Is a Post-Islamist Democracy Possible?

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He is a recipient of several awards and grants including the Fulbright Scholar Award, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Connection Grant, and the SSHRC Conference Fund, IDRC Canada Partnership Grant, Killam Research Operating Grant, Visiting Fellow Grant at the Liu Institute and Green College at the University of British Columbia, among others.

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Dr. Mahdavi’s research lies at the intersection of critical Middle East Studies, Political Economy, Contemporary Islamic Studies, and Decolonial/Postcolonial Studies. It is primarily driven by his interest in socio-structural changes in the life of ordinary people and discursive/intellectual transformations in the MENA/Muslim contexts.

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