Kenichi Tani

Dr Kenichi Tani is a Sasakawa Research Fellow at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies, specializing in social anthropology with a focus on Iranian studies. He holds a PhD (2022) from Hitotsubashi University, Japan, and dual MA degrees from Hitotsubashi University and the University of Tehran.

• Conducted 44 months of anthropological fieldwork in southern Tehran.
• Research interests: Shi'i rituals, criticism of secularism, and Iranian popular culture.
• Published a monograph on Ashura rituals in contemporary Iran.

His work emphasizes ethnographic analysis of religious practices and comparative studies of Iranian and Azerbaijani societies. Current projects include translating anthropology texts into Japanese and preparing an English edition of his dissertation.

Scientific awards:

• Sasakawa Research Fellowship

Dr Tani's scholarship critiques Western knowledge production frameworks through fieldwork-based anthropological inquiry.