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Chair: Dr Amanda Chisholm, Senior Lecturer in Security Studies / Researcher in Gender and Security
Speaker: Ahou Koutchesfahani, PhD candidate at the Department of War Studies at KCL.
Discussant: Dr Omar Al-Ghazzi
Social media is an important tool for women’s rights activists to highlight issues facing Iranian women. The discourse on women’s rights in Iran navigates both inside and outside the country, as social media underpins the active transnational Iranian public sphere.
This discussion will highlight the role of social media in furthering women’s rights discourse in the transnational Iranian public sphere. Are competing narratives battling for visibility? Who are the different factions behind the competing narratives? Ahou will argues that social media constitutes a new ground upon which different state and non-state political actors battle for power over women’s bodies while women’s rights advocates struggle in their own battle for visibility, using social media for their activism despite the challenges that arise both domestically and internationally.
Bio
Ahou Koutchesfahani is a PhD candidate at the Department of War Studies at KCL. Her research is concerned with feminist politics and social movements, with a focus on Iran. Her thesis traces the trajectory of feminist activism in Iran in the twentieth century to today, with an emphasis on the role of social media in shaping modern feminist discourse. She has previously held roles in digital communications in the public sector and in the third sector.
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