For summer 2026, MERIP will be hosting a multi-part event series, Iran in Context, in collaboration with BRISMES and SeSaMO. This series will feature leading experts on Iran in conversation with MERIP's Executive Director, James Ryan, MERIP editorial committee member and BRISMES board member Sabiha Allouche, and SeSaMO Secretary Paola Rivetti.

For our next event, titled Iran in Context Part II: Politics and Counter-Politics in Contemporary Iran, we explore the politics of people’s mobilization and the political cleavages that characterize Iranian society to find out how ordinary people in Iran relate to big and small questions alike. We ask, for instance: can we talk about cultures of the Right and cultures of the Left in Iran? If so, what do they look like, and how do they manifest not only in relation to nationalism/nation, religion, migration, or democracy/fascism, but also to the question of solidarity with Palestine? While examining the lines of divisions that cut across Iranian society, we will ask how different forms of mobilization have shaped contemporary Iran. How have bottom-up protest, reform, and civic activism, transformed political subjectivities and produced democratic horizons, even without regime collapse? And how has the state mobilized supporters through institutions, ideology, nationalism, and with what consequences?   

We will be joined by speakers Naghmeh Sohrabi, Mohammad Ali Kadivar, and Paniz Musawi Natanzi who will help us read competing political narratives, mobilizations, and counter-mobilizations in Iran. 

For more information and to register, click the link below.