Our Faculty - Anthropology

Dr. Navid Fozi is a cultural anthropologist whose research explores minorities, migration, and emergent forms of pluralism and nationalism in Iran and its diasporas.  Fozi has conducted fieldwork with and published on ethnoreligious minorities in Iran, including his book on the Zoroastrians entitled Reclaiming the Faravahar: Zoroastrian Survival in Contemporary Tehran (Leiden University Press, 2014), and on the Ahl-e Haqq community entitled “The Hallowed Summoning of Tradition” (Anthropological Quarterly, 2007). He has also published on contemporary Iranian politics, including “Governmentality and Crises of Representation, Knowledge and Power in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Asian Politics & Policy 2015); and “‘Neo-Iranian Nationalism,’” (The Middle East Journal, 2016). Fozi’s current project is based on his 2014-2017 field research among Iranian asylum seekers in Turkey, conducted as a fellow of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) at the Middle East Technical University of Ankara. Tentatively entitled “Diasporic Counterpublics: Multiplicities, Challenges, and Trajectories of Iranian Asylum Seekers in Turkey,” this project explores issues that range from Islamic Shiʿi Jurisprudence, citizenship rights, border crossing, and right of asylum, to transit processes, international politics, and transnational practices. Fozi has been awarded a Visiting Fellowship at Harvard Law School’s Islamic Studies Program (2017-2018), a Fulbright-US Scholarship based in University of Malaya for fieldwork with Iranian Diaspora in Kuala Lumpur (2014), a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore (2011-2014), and a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad for fieldwork in Iran (2006-2007).

Dr. Poliandri is a cultural anthropologist specialized in Native American Studies. He holds a PhD from Brown University and is an elected member of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. He has conducted ethnographic fieldwork among the Mi’kmaw people of the Canadian Maritimes since 2000, working on issues of traditionalism, contemporary identity dynamics and, recently, Aboriginal nationhood and nation-building. His monograph First Nations, Identity, and Reserve Life: The Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2011. His second book, an edited collection on the recent developments of Native American nationalism and nation-building, was published in the SUNY Press “Tribal Worlds” series in 2016. Dr. Poliandri has publications in academic journals and edited volumes on several topics, including social science research methods, Mi’kmaw residential school experiences in the twentieth century, contemporary Aboriginal maritime harvesting, and Native American ethnohistory. He is an Editorial Board Member for the series “Ethnographie Americane” published at the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” Italy. He teaches introductory and upper level courses in the social sciences and Native American Studies. He also coordinates the American Studies program. Dr. Poliandri plays acoustic guitar and soccer, and goes sailing for recreation. He lives in Massachusetts with his wife and daughter.