Fariba Parsa

Assistant Professor

Fariba Parsa is an affiliate faculty member of Women and Gender Studies. Dr. Parsa was born and raised in Iran. She began her political activities at age of 15, fled Iran at age of 17, because of the threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran. She has been living in India and Germany for about 2 years and in 1984 she fled to Denmark and become a Danish citizen. In Denmark she got her Master's Degree in political science and her PhD's in social sciences from University of Copenhagen and Roskilde University. She has also worked with the Danish national and grassroots organizations for human rights and democracy for more than 15 years. She was elected as a board member in a number of organizations in Denmark, such as the Danish National Women Council and the UN- Association of Denmark, National Committee for UNESCO, Danish Council for European Union and Danish National Council for Human Rights. She contributed to Danish newspapers, national TV and Radio on Iranian Politics, women’s rights and political Islam,

Fariba Parsa came to the United States in 2010, when she was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, where she conducted research on the concept “secularism.” In 2012-2013, she was a visiting scholar at the University of Maryland’s Roshan Center for Persian studies and the Department of Women’s Studies, conducting research on Iranian women’s movements for gender equality. Since December 2013 she is affiliated with George Mason University. She is also a visiting scholar at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.