Latifeh Aavani

Latifeh Aavani is the Ehsan Yarshater Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale and a Lecturer in Religious Studies. She is a scholar of law and religion, focusing on the history of Islamic law and the history of constitutionalism in the modern Middle East. Her research examines the process of modernization in the post-colonial period, particularly the rise of constitutionalism as a method of legal reform. She explores the relationship between modern law and secularism and how religion is reflected in constitutional frameworks. She is currently working on a book project on the history of the rule of law and constitutional thought in Iran.

 

She also works on legal theory, with a focus on Shi‘i legal theory, legal semantics, the epistemology of law and family law.

 

Latifeh has extensive experience teaching a range of courses on Islamic law in the modern Middle East, Shi‘i law, law and social change, and law and religion in both the U.S. and the Middle East. As a teaching fellow at Harvard University, she received multiple teaching awards.

 

She holds an LLB from the University of Tehran Faculty of Law, an LLM from Boston College, an LLM from Harvard Law School, and a PhD in the Study of Religion from Harvard University.