Atieh Babakhani

Atieh Babakhani is an Assistant Professor of Law and Society at Ramapo College of New Jersey, where she teaches courses on law and gender, civil disobedience, and race and the legal system. She joined the faculty in 2023 and is affiliated with the Law and Society program as well as the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor.

Dr. Babakhani holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Delaware, an LL.M. in American Legal Practice from Drexel University, an M.A. in International Law from Allameh Tabatabaei University, and a B.A. in Law from Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, Iran. Her interdisciplinary training informs a research agenda centered on gender-based violence, legal mobilization, and the lived experience of law in authoritarian and post-authoritarian contexts.

Her recent publications explore state control over Muslim women’s bodies, victims’ experiences with Iran’s criminal justice system, and the dynamics of power and connection in prison education programs. She has published in journals such as Sociological Inquiry, Violence Against Women, and Journal of Health Care Law. Her current work includes a study of legal mobilization by Iranian women and an examination of how lawyers act as incremental agents of change under restrictive regimes.

Dr. Babakhani brings a global, intersectional perspective to the study of law and society, drawing on both her legal education and her sociological scholarship to examine how law is practiced, experienced, and contested across diverse contexts.