Tara Mehrabi

I am an interdisciplinary researcher with my background in sociology of science and technologies, sociology of health and illness, as well as gender studies. I am interested in exploring the intersection between bodies, environment, health, illness, technology, life and death.

I have previously studied IVF technologies in Iran and normalization and naturalization of the technologies within the Iranian context in relation to gender, class, and religion. For my PhD studies, I did a laboratory ethnography to study knowledge production practices in Alzheimer’s sciences. My dissertation is about how death (as in neural death, animal models sacrifice, and corpse) is made in the lab and becomes meaningful in the every-day practices of making knowledge about AD’s biochemistry and protein interactions. My dissertation, Making Death Matter (206), also discusses ethical and political questions such as which bodies become killable within the economy of AD sciences and how these killable bodies are produced, used, and disposed of. What kind of political and ethical question such deaths, dying and dead bodies raise for feminist technoscience studies, posthumanities, and critical studies of death.  

My postdoctoral research was funded by the Localizing Feminist New Materialism project (Turku University). I did two small-scale studies during my postdoc. My first two articles are continuations of my PhD research and are connected to my collaboration with the Queer Death Studies Network. First article, Being Intimate with the Flies, explores the embodied and affective bodily responses that generates uncomfortable feelings such as disgust as a method for feminist STS knowledge production. Second article, localizes the question of material agency, life/death, and nature through discussing the performativity of dead matter, dying bodies and death itself in the context of waste management in the laboratory. My last publication in the project is a forthcoming chapter on allergies, transcorporeality and intersectionality that is to be published as part of a book volume on intersectionality and FNM. 

Currently, I am involved in the research platform Digital Well Arena by Compare and funded by Vinnova. The project I am involved with is to study accessibility and inclusiveness within the context of digitalization of healthcare in Sweden. We are currently doing the pilot studies, that is to conduct interviews with 2 focus groups, one consist of cis-gender women with an immigration background, and the other is interviews with transgender and nonbinary individuals.

My teaching covers different areas of the gender studies courses offered by CGF. I teach the introductory module in gender studies, feminist theories and methodologies, introduction to feminist technoscience studies, and gender, health and technologies among other topics.

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).

Monographs

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

Access: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A1047620&dswid=6982.

Articles

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

Mehrabi, T. (2020). "Almanac: Affective method." Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research 1, no. 2: 154-157.

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

Radomska M., Mehrabi, T., Lykke, N. (2019). ”Queer Death Studies: Coming to Terms with Death, Dying and Mourning Differently”, an Introduction to the Special Issue “Queer Death Studies: Coming to terms with death, dying and mourning differently, Women, Gender and Research, 28 (3-4):3-11

Mehrabi, T. (2018). "Being intimate with flies: on affective methodologies and laboratory work." Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, 1: 73-80.

Special Issues

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

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

Mehrabi, T. and Tainio, L. (eds.). Forthcoming. Special issue “Gender and Sexual Politics of the COVID-19 Pandemic” in the European Journal of Women’s Studies.

A. Henriksson, K. Kuurne, T. Mehrabi (eds.). Forthcoming. Special Issue “Intimacy Beyond the Familiar” in the journal Culture Unbound.

Peer-reviewed book chapters

Mehrabi T., and C. Åsberg, (2017). “Model Territories: Choreographies of Laboratory Flies”, in Animal Places. Lively Cartographies of Human Animal Relations. (eds.) Bull, J., Holmberg, T., Åsberg, C. Routledge: London.

Mehrabi, T. (2017). “Alzheimer’s in the making: A feminist laboratory study of Alzheimer’s disease”, in Gendering Drugs. (ed.) Johnson, E. Palgrave: London

Åsberg C. and Mehrabi, T. (2016). “Nature in the lab” in Gender: Nature (MacMillan Interdisciplinary Handbooks) edited by Iris Van der Tuin. Schirmer Books,U.S.

Mehrabi, T., 2016. Matters of Donation and Preserved Relations: Co-Construction of Egg Donation and Family Structures in Iran. In Assisted Reproduction Across Borders Subtitle: Feminist Perspectives on Normalizations, Disruptions and Transmissions. (eds.) Merete Lie and Nina Lykke. Routledge

Position papers

Hinton, P., Mehrabi, and Barla. "New materialisms/New colonialisms." Unpublished manuscript, Åbo Akademi University, Finland (2015).