By Rachel Brazil, for Physics Today
The Iranian cosmologist has struggled to find a professional and physical place to call home after she publicly supported the country’s “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement.
| Image Credit: Encieh Erfani (Physics Today) |
Everything changed for Iranian cosmologist Encieh Erfani in the fall of 2022. On 16 September, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody in Tehran following her arrest for allegedly breaching the country’s strict dress code for women. In Mexico at the time for a visiting fellowship, Erfani followed the news as the largest demonstrations in Iran since 2009 ensued.
A week after Amini’s death, Erfani spoke up in support of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” protest movement and resigned from her faculty position at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Basic Sciences in Zanjan. Soon after, she says, her family in Iran received a threatening phone call. Erfani chose to remain in exile, fearing imprisonment if she were to return home.
Notably, she chose not to wear a hijab at conferences or on social media when she was outside Iran. “I knew that my colleagues [in Iran] would see and that I would pay for that,” she says. But, until recently, she “could never imagine that not wearing the hijab could cause you to be killed.”
Read more at
https://pubs.aip.org/physicstoday/online/43050/Q-A-Encieh-Erfani-brings-attention-to-fellow