Naysan Adlparvar is a Postdoctoral Associate in the Program in Iranian Studies at Yale University. He was awarded a Rice Faculty Fellowship for the 2017-18 academic year. Naysan recently completed his PhD thesis, at the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies, investigating the impacts of post-2001 political reconstruction upon inter-ethnic relations in Afghanistan’s Bamyan Valley. In 2016, Naysan published an article entitled The Evolution of Ethnicity Theory: Intersectionality, Geopolitics and Development, which discusses the development of, and potential new frontiers of research in, ethnicity theory. He also co-authored the article Afghan Values or Women’s Rights? Gendered Narratives about Continuity and Change in Urban Afghanistan (2011). Naysan is currently preparing his PhD research for publication as a book and as a number of journal articles.
Naysan has spent almost a decade working for NGOs and the United Nations in Afghanistan, Jordan and Iraq. In this capacity, he has led and published poverty assessments on Iraq and Afghanistan. He currently advises UNDP, in New York, supporting the development of policy and program guidance on governance and peacebuilding in fragile and conflict-affected settings.