I study how stories of exile and activism travel across borders and institutions, and I help people use those stories to teach and organize more justly.
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. I am an advanced doctoral candidate in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where I also earned an M.A. in History in 2022 after completing a B.A. in History with a minor in French at UCLA in 2017.
My dissertation examines the Union des étudiants iraniens en France (U.E.I.F.) and its role in transnational activism from the postwar years through the 1979 Iranian Revolution. I show how secular Iranian students in Paris used human rights discourse to challenge the authoritarian rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and to place their struggle within wider anti-imperialist and decolonial currents.
My broader work sits in modern European intellectual history and traces how political thought and psychoanalysis, working within postwar critical theory, grapple with subject formation and the crises of liberal modernity. I read figures such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jean-François Lyotard, and Étienne Balibar as resources for thinking about these problems rather than as a closed canon.
I also work in critical New Testament studies and the history of theology, with particular attention to the apocalyptic turn in Pauline scholarship. I learn from the work of Martinus C. de Boer and Beverly Roberts Gaventa. Douglas A. Campbell’s writing is also important for this part of my work. I am an ordained deacon in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and serve at First Presbyterian Church of Ann Arbor.
Services
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Consulting
I work with clients on historical reconstruction and educational design, with a particular focus on knowledge-work systems. Drawing on my experience as a university teacher and pedagogy consultant, I support faculty, graduate instructors, and programs in course and syllabus design, assignment sequencing, assessment practices, and equity-focused teaching. I also help scholars and professionals build sustainable workflows for research, writing, and personal information management that are aligned with their intellectual and vocational goals.
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Translation Work
I provide translation from French, German, and modern Persian into English with sustained attention to conceptual precision and to the interpretive commitments that shape each source. My historical training informs a method of close reading that supports careful handling of texts so that tone and context remain intact in the English version. Clients seek me out for work that requires sensitivity to idiom and genre, as well as an ability to track how meaning shifts across linguistic and cultural settings. My published translations, including work for The New International and other venues listed in my CV, reflect this approach.
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Editing
I support writers who want their work to read with greater clarity and purpose. I examine drafts to locate points where arguments lose direction, where explanations create confusion, or where the structure slows the reader. I then work with clients to develop a more coherent and persuasive manuscript that reflects their goals for the project. My approach suits academic authors as well as professionals preparing reports and other public-facing materials, and it draws on long experience with research-intensive writing and editorial practice.