Hajar Ghorbani is an anthropologist and leading death studies scholar specializing in the cultural, social, and political dynamics of mortality, with a particular focus on non-Western contexts and contemporary Iran. Currently a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Alberta, her groundbreaking work has been supported by Canada’s most prestigious academic honors, including the Killam Scholarship and the SSHRC Vanier Graduate Scholarship (where she was ranked first in the country). Hajar’s research reshapes how we understand the deceased, pioneering a theoretical approach that attributes social and political agency to dead bodies.

Ghorbani, H. (ed.) (2021) Social Studies of Death: Death in Iranian Culture and Society, Tehran: Anthropology [in Persian].

Ghorbani, H. (2025) ‘Governing the dead’s territory: the politicization of death in Iran’, in K. Woodthorpe, H. Frisby and B. Michael-Fox (eds) Death and Institutions, Bristol: Policy Press, 88-89.

Pentaris, P., Pitsillides, S. and Ghorbani, H. (2026) (eds) Decolonising Death Studies, London: Routledge.