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Iranian-French academic From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut (Persian: آزاده کیان; born 1958) is an Iranian-French academic, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Social Sciences department and Director of the Center for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University Paris Cité.[1] She is included and recognized in the BBC project 100 Women.[2]
From 1987 to 1990, Kian was a lecturer in political sociology at UCLA. In 1995 she joined the faculty of University Paris III, and later the University of Paris VIII Saint Denis. She is a research expert on Iranian and Maghreb studies, and is a researcher for the Iranian laboratory CNRS. Notable works include Avoir vingt ans en Iran (Alternatives, 1999), Les femmes iraniennes entre islam État et famille (Maisonneuve & Larose, 2002) and La République islamique d'Iran : de la maison du Guide à la raison d'État (Michalon, 2005).[3] In 1996 she published the article Des femmes iraniennes contre le clergé: islamistes et laiques pour la premiere fois unies in Le Monde diplomatique,[4] and in 2010 she published the article Islamic Feminism in Iran: A New Form of Subjugation or the Emergence of Agency? in Critique internationale journal.[5] In her works, she is critical of Islamic laws (shari'a) in Muslim countries and sees them as a threat to women's rights of equality.[6]
The Servizio d’informatione religiosa (SIR) defined her “the most listened woman of the Iranian diaspora”.[7]
In 2024, she won the Latifeh Yarshater Award, assigned by the Persian Heritage Foundation.[8]
She is among the most consulted Iranian diaspora women in the world to comment the social and political evolutions of her native country.[9] [10]
She described the moment of the death of Mahsa Amini as a turning point where civil society openly contradicts Iranian power (“What's unprecedented about these protests is that women are leading the chargel”)[11][12] and she delivered a pitch as invited guest in the European Parliament in october 2022 after a meeting with European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.[13] She spoke at Les Echos Belgium about talebanization of power in Iran. In November 2022, she affirmed that the crisis in Iran is a revolution aiming to change the regime, and not just a protest from civil society.