Pardis Mahdavi, PhD is associate professor of anthropology at Pomona College. Her research interests include gendered labor, migration, sexuality, human rights, youth culture, transnational feminism and public health in the context of changing global and political structures. Her first book, Passionate Uprisings: Iran's Sexual Revolution was published with Stanford University Press in 2008, and her second book, Gridlock: Labor, Migration and 'Human Trafficking' in Dubai, also Stanford University Press, is now available.

Pardis teaches courses on Medical Anthropology, Sociocultural Anthropology, Ethnographic Methods and has designed new courses entitled "Sexual Politics of the Middle East" and "Love, Labor and the Law". She has published in the Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Social Identities, Comparative Studies of South Asia Africa and the Middle East, Anthropology News, and the Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World Review. She has received fellowships and awards from institutions such as the American Council of Learned Societies, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the National Drug Research Institute, the American Public Health Association, and the Society for Applied Anthropology.