Niloofar Haeri

Niloofar Haeri is a Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University's Krieger School of Arts & Sciences. Her research focuses on language, religion, and ritual, particularly in Iran and Egypt. She holds a PhD and BA in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work explores the interplay between language and society, including the role of Classical Arabic in Muslim cultures, the connection between prayer and poetry in Iranian women's lives, and modernity's impact on religious practices.

Haeri has authored influential books like Sacred Language, Ordinary People (2003) and Say What Your Longing Heart Desires (2021), which won the AAR and MESA awards. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and Stanford Humanities Center. Her research also extends to comparative studies of sincerity in religious communities and the cultural politics of modesty in Iran.

Her current projects include investigating the role of poetry in Iranian religious practices, the standardization of vernacular Arabic, and cross-cultural visual protest art. She collaborates with scholars on global language modernization and Middle Eastern sociolinguistics.