Maziyar Ghiabi is Wellcome Lecturer in Medical Humanities and Politics. His primary work has concerned the study of illegal drugs and ‘addiction’ in West Asia and in the global South. He has carried out extensive ethnographic and historical research in Iran and Lebanon. Maziyar is currently a P.I. on the Wellcome-funded project Living ‘Addiction’ in States of Disruption: a transdisciplinary approach to drug consumption and recovery in the Middle East. Before this, Maziyar was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Drugs & (Dis)Order Project, based at the SOAS (University of London) and held research and teaching positions at Oxford University, the EHESS and SciencesPO. His first book Drugs Politics: Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran (London: Cambridge University Press, 2019, now also available in Paperback and Open Access formats) was awarded the 2020 Book of the Year (Nikki Keddie Prize) by the Middle Eastern Studies Association (MESA). Maziyar is also the author of Power and Illicit Drugs in the Global South (Routledge, 2019) and of a forthcoming book (co-authored with Billie Jeanne Brownlee) titled States without People (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022). His work has been published in English, French, Portuguese, Italian, Arabic and Persian. He is part of the Editorial Board of Third World Quarterly, Social History of Alcohol and Drugs (University of Chicago Press), and Journal of Illicit Economies and Development (LSE Press).
Ghiabi M (2019). Drugs Politics Managing Disorder in the Islamic Republic of Iran., Cambridge University Press. Abstract. Full text.
Ghiabi M (2021). Ontological journeys: the lifeworld of opium across the Afghan-Iranian border in/out of the pharmacy. International Journal of Drug Policy, 89, 103116-103116. DOI.
Brownlee BJ, Ghiabi M (2021). The Mythological Machine in the Great Civil War (2001–2021): Oikos and Polis in Nation-Making. Middle East Critique, 30(2), 127-148. DOI.
Ghiabi M (2018). Under the bridge in Tehran: Addiction, Poverty and Capital. Ethnography, 21(2), 151-175. Abstract. Full text. DOI.
