Email: adaghagheleh@sociology.rutgers.edu
Address:
26 Nichol Avenue
New Brunswick, N.J.
08901
Phone:
848-932-4029

Aghil Daghagheleh is a sociologist, social and political activist, blogger, and writer. His research and writing is rooted within the themes of indigeneity, ethnic minorities, social movements, and resistance in Iran and the Middle East and crosses the fields of sociology, anthropology, Indigenous Studies, history, and affect theory.

Aghil is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Sociology, Rutgers University. In his recent research project, Aghil shows how indigeneity and coloniality becomes a significant facet of subaltern politics and explores modalities of resistance, subversion, negotiation, and refusal that marginalized communities deploy to cope with the effects of ethnoreligious nationalism at the nexus of development, neoliberal economics, and political authoritarianism.He draws on theories at the intersection of critical indigenous studies and settler-colonial studies to propose a unique story of refusal that highlights the quotidian struggles of Arab minorities living in the Islamic Republic.

Aghil is also known as a social and political activist, focusing on subjects including ethnic and indigenous communities, social movements, poverty, and subaltern politics in Iran and the Middle East. As a college student in Iran, he actively engaged in political activities and was an active member of Tahkim vahdat.  As writer, he published dozens of essays and articles, both in peer-review journals as well as well-known magazines (like Middle East Report Online, Context,  Problematicaa, Meidaan) and his personal blog. Aghil co-authored a book on Urban Poverty and Social Problems in Tehran (2011). His recent essay, published at Mashq-e Farda, explores the inadequacy of democracy for solving the puzzle of ethnic minorities in Iran. In another article, The Art of Making Colonialism Invisible, Aghil explores the 2019 wave of protests in Iraq as an anti-colonial movement.

Aghil worked as a senior researcher, Director, and Vice-Director for Research Affairs in a leading research institution, ACECR. He designed, managed, and supervised dozens of national surveys in Iran, including The Iranian Political Survey (2006), National Survey of Social Capital in Iran (2004), The World Value Survey in Iran (2005), and Voting behavior and Electoral Studies  in Iran (2005 and 2010). Drawing on one of these studies, his 2018 article in Sociological Forum focuses on how social movements and ethnic minorities might creatively and differently engage with unfair elections to voice their protests. Aghil conducted research projects on the Social Impact Assessment of developmental project, and with his colleagues (2008) published an article on destructive consequences of the establishment of large oil and gas complexes in Iran.

As a teacher, Aghil is deeply committed to creating a safe and inclusive space in which every student can shine through. He contributed to curriculum development in the Sociology Department at Rutgers by designing courses that reflect my interest in ethnic relations, including in Introduction to Sociology, Race Relations, and Contemporary Sociological Theory.