Afsaneh Najmabadi is the Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History and of Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Emerita at Harvard University. Her book, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), received the 2005 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association. With Kathryn Babayan, she co-edited Islamicate Sexualities: Translations across Temporal Geographies of Desire (Harvard University Press, Middle Eastern Monographs, 2008). Her latest book, Professing Selves: Transsexuality and Same-Sex Desire in Contemporary Iran (Duke University Press, 2013) was a finalist for Lambda Literary Award in 2014 and received the 2014 Joan Kelly prize from the American Historical Association for best book in women’s history and feminist theory, and was a co-winner of 2015 John Boswell prize, LBGT History, American Historical Association. A book conversation on New Books in Islamic Studies features this book: https://newbooksnetwork.com/afaneh-najmabadi-professing-selves-transsexuality-and-same-sex-desire-in-contemporary-iran-duke-up-2013-2/

Najmabadi leads a digital archive and website, Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran. The project has received five two-year grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and it was recognized by the White House Office of Public Engagement in May of 2012.