Reza Nejad Masoudi

I am an urban anthropologist with a cross-disciplinary background in architecture, urban morphology and anthropology. Currently I am a Research Associate at the Department of Anthropology, SOAS University of London. I received my PhD from UCL, University of London in 2009 and I am a Royal Anthropological Institute Fellow. Since completing my PhD, my academic career has developed in the British and German leading universities and academic institutes such as the Max Planck Institute for Religious and Ethnic Diversity (MPI-MMG, Göttingen), the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO) Berlin, FU Berlin and TU Berlin. I have conducted many years of fieldwork and research in the Middle East and India. My primary research interests are urban dynamics, the social production of space and the spatial aspects of religious rituals. I have been focusing on the transformation of cities, the question of crowds and protests, urban violence and conciliation, cosmopolitan process, and urban resilience. While I have previously gazed at the religious rituals as an active parts of urban dynamics in Iranian cities and Mumbai (India), now rather broadly focused on the question of social and spatial reliance of cities.