Tara Mehrabi

I am a feminist technoscience studies enthusiast, interested in exploring sociomaterial relations through which bodies, life/death, health/illness, scientific knowledge, and digital technologies come to matter differently. 

I am an editorial board member for the Danish Journal of Women, Gender and Research, and a scientific committee member for MATTER: Journal of New Materialist Research.

Current research: 

• Queering, decolonising, and posthumanising death and mourning. For more details, please visit Queer Death Studies Network, which I am a co-founder, and Routledge International Handbook of Queer Death Studies, which I am a co-editor.
• Theoretical and methodological exploration of intersectionality and feminist new materialism through one another. This is connected to my postdoc at Turku University, and one outcome is the edited volume New Materialism and Intersectionality: Making Middles Matter, which I am a co-editor.
• Digitalisation of care for older adults within the Swedish context. This is a project connected to the ERUF-funded program Digital Health Innovation (DHINO). My research focuses on questions of equality, intersectionality and independence.
• Responsible AI in practice. This is connected to the project Operationalising Human Rights in the Design of AI-supported Digital Health (OPEHRA). 

Expert assignments:

Aside from my research, I currently work as a gender equality consultant (on behalf of Karlstad uni) in the EU-funded project DEBUTING. The project addresses gender equality in S&Ms through the lens of smart specialisation with 11 European partners through the exchange of good examples, thematic workshops, etc., aiming at policy change. 

I am the program leader for the BA program Global Perspectives on Gender, Human Rights and Social Justice 

My teaching covers different areas within gender studies. For instance, I teach introductory modules in gender studies; feminist theories and methodologies; feminist technoscience studies; gender, health and technologies; as well as decolonial and postcolonial theories. 

I am the co-founder of the Queer Death Studies Network (QDSN) (with Dr. Annika Jonsson, Dr. Marietta Radomska and Prof. Nina Lykke).  I am also the co-chairperson of GEXcel International Collegium research strand “Death Studies: Queerfeminist Materialist Perspectives” (see https://www.gexcel.org/critical-life-studies), and an affiliated member of the Posthumanities Hub (KTH, SE).

Books

Golovina, K., Pechurina, A., Mehrabi, T., Heikkinen, S, eds. (forthcoming 2026). Aging Migrants and Digital Technologies. Routledge.

Lykke, L., Mehrabi, T., Radomska, M., eds. (2025). The International Handbook of Queer Death Studies. Routledge. 

Kontturi, K., Leppänen, T., Mehrabi, T., Tiainen M., eds., (2025). New Materialisms and Intersectionality: Making Middles Matter. Routledge Intersectionality Series. ISBN 9781032518015.

Mehrabi, T. (2016). Making Death Matter: A Feminist Technoscience Study of Alzheimer’s Sciences in the Laboratory [PhD dissertation]. Linköping: Linköping University Electronic Press.  

Articles

Mehrabi, T. & Straube, W. (2024). “Unsettling Intimacies: On world-making practices with the Other in Minoosh Zomorodinia mixed-media installation Knots and Ripples”. Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research (NORA). https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2024.2432439 

Mehrabi T. (2020). “Queer Ecologies of Death in the Lab: rethinking waste, decomposition and death through a feminist queer lens”, special Issue Queer Death Studies: Death, Dying and Mourning in a Queerfeminist Context. (eds.) Marietta Radomska, Tara Mehrabi and Nina Lykke in the Australian Feminist Studies Journal, 35(104): 138-154

Tiainen M., Leppänen, T., Kontturi, K., Mehrabi, T. (2020). ”Making Middles Matter: Intersecting Intersectionality with New Materialisms”, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 28(3): 211-223

Radomska, M., Mehrabi, T., Lykke, N. (2020). ”Queer Death Studies: Death, Dying and Mourning from a Queerfeminist Perspective”, Australian Feminist Studies, 35(104): 81-100

Book Chapters: 

Mehrabi, T. and Ghorbani, H. (2025). “Killable bodies and necrovalue in times of COVID:  an ethnography of death in Iran through a feminist-queer lens”. In the Handbook of Queer Death Studies. Eds., Lykke, Mehrabi, & Radomska. Routledge.

Lykke, N., Mehrabi, T., and Radomska, M. (2025). “Queer Death Studies: In times of Anthropocene necropolitics and the search for new ethico-political imaginations”. In the Handbook of Queer Death Studies. Eds., Lykke, Mehrabi, Radomska. Routledge.

Mehrabi, T. (2025). “Allergic encounters in contact zones: Rethinking intersectionality through debility and trans-corporeality”. In Making Middles Matter: Feminist Methodologies in-between New Materialisms and Intersectionality. Eds., Leppänen, T., Tiainen M., Mehrabi, T., Kontturi, K. Routledge.  

Mehrabi, T., Tiainen, M., Kontturi, K., and Leppänen, T. (2025). “Making Middles Matter- Feminist and Gender Studies in-between Intersectionality and New Materialisms”. In Intersectionality and New Materialism: Making Middles Matter. Eds., Leppänen, T., Tiainen M., Mehrabi, T., Kontturi, K., Routledge.

Special Issues

Henriksson, A., Mehrabi, T., Kuurne, K. (forthcoming, 2026). Special Issue “Intimacy Beyond the Familiar” in the journal NORA.

Brandt Andreasen, Florêncio, J., M., Green, K. R., Mehrabi, T. (forthcoming, 2026); (Un)gendering the Digital World. In Kvinder, Køn & Forskning [Women, Gender & Research]

Mehrabi T., Hultman, M., Uldbjerg Mortensen, S., Liu, X. (2024). Special Issue “Gender and the Climate Catastrophe”. In Kvinder, Køn & Forskning [Women, Gender & Research], N. 1, https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/issue/view/11383.

Mehrabi, T. and Tainio, L. (2022). Special issue “Gender and Sexual Politics of the COVID-19 Pandemic”. In the European Journal of Women’s Studies. 29(1_suppl), 3S-11S.

Radomska, M., Mehrabi, T., Lykke, N. (2020). Special Issue “Queer Death Studies: Death, Dying and Mourning in a Queerfeminist Context”, The Australian Feminist Studies Journal, 35(104): 81-201.

Radomska, M., Mehrabi, T., Lykke, N. (2019). Special Issue “Queer Death Studies: Coming to terms with death, dying and mourning differently”, Kvinder, Køn & Forskning [Women, Gender & Research], 28 (3-4): 1-126