Dr. Nina Ansary is an award-winning Iranian American author, historian and women’s rights advocate whose interdisciplinary scholarship focuses on the role of women in Iranian history and the broader implications of structural gender inequality worldwide. She is currently the Director of the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum Women’s Leadership Initiative at the University of Cambridge and was previously a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics Centre for Women, Peace, and Security.

Ansary is the author of Jewels of Allah: The Untold Story of Women in Iran and Anonymous Is a Woman: A Global Chronicle of Gender Inequality, both of which have received critical acclaim and multiple awards, including the International Book Award, the Benjamin Franklin Book Award, and the Eric Hoffer Award. Her research contributes to ongoing academic discourse on women’s agency, resistance and representation under authoritarian and theocratic regimes, and her publications have been featured in policy forums and cited in journals addressing Women’s Studies and Middle Eastern History.

She is a regular speaker at global forums and institutions including the United Nations, Harvard University, Oxford University, and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, and a frequent guest on international media outlets including CNN, the BBC, Sky News, Fox News and NBC’s TODAY. Her commentary and work have been featured in Time, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Beast and The Hill.

Dr. Ansary is the recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, Barnard College, Columbia University’s Trailblazer Award, Girl Up, United Nations Foundation’s Girl Hero Award, and Columbia University’s Outstanding Alumni Award.

She holds a Ph.D. in History and a Master of Arts in Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies from Columbia University, and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Iranian American Women Foundation and the Advisory Board of the Cambridge Middle East and North Africa Forum; an independent non-partisan think-tank based out of the academic community of the University of Cambridge.

To contact Nina Ansary, please send an email to nina@ninaansary.com or connect with her on:

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