Nominees for the BRISMES Council (2025-2028)

Sara Tafakori 

Sara Tafakori is an Assistant Professor in Critical Media Studies at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research lies at the intersection of feminist and postcolonial theory, affect theory and media and cultural studies. Her work particularly explores the problematics of constructing feminist solidarity, with a focus on hybrid activist networks in Iran. She is interested in digital affective practices in (post)colonial contact zones and their role in creating new political spaces of appearance, alternative archives and revolutionary imaginaries. Her work exploring melancholia and grief as sites of revolutionary intimacy and activist resources was the recipient of 2022 non-resident research grant fellowship from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at the University of Western Australia. Tafakori’s research on digital activism and archives has also been supported by an in-residence fellowship from the Centre for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS) at Ruhr University Bochum (2023). She is the co-recipient of a British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) British Academy grant award in 2024-5 for the collaborative international research project 'Feminist solidarities, archives of hope and (im)possible futures'. She was also co- recipient of a 2020 European International Studies Association (EISA) Workshop Grant Award for excellence for the research proposal ‘Decolonizing Affective Attachments in Global Politics’. She is co-editor of the Brill Critical Emotion Studies book series, an interdisciplinary book series engaging with affect and emotion in the contexts of race, racism, and coloniality; gender and sexuality; indigenous politics; social movements; conflict, security, and changing technologies. Dr Tafakori is currently co-editing a special issue of the leading journal Middle East Critique, with Dr Sabiha Allouche (University of Exeter): the issue is titled ‘Affective Counter-Archives: Feeling the Global Majority’.