Azadeh Akbari

University of Twente | UT · Department of Public Administration (PA)

As the world seemed undecided in praising China’s crisis management through what was formerly called networked authoritarianism (MacKinnon 2011), countries such as Iran showed no interest in extending its notorious political surveillance practices into the public health arena. Consequently, this paper asks if the umbrella term “authoritarian survei...

This research starts its journey from a video that failed to be published during the 2009 uprising in Iran. By following data outside the common trajectories of data circulation in the global North, this paper offers new geographical and data imaginations neglected by the universalised understandings of data and its political economy. Consequently,...

Telegram messenger, created by an exiled Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, brands itself as a non-mainstream and non-Western guarantor of privacy in messaging. This paper offers an in-depth analysis of the challenges faced by the platform in Iran, with 59.5% of the population using its services, and in Russia, where Telegram is popular among the ur...

According to the United Nations, schools' closures have impacted up to 99 per cent of the student population in low and lower-middle-income countries. This research-in-progress report introduces a project on Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) measures in the ten member states of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) with a focus on the applicati...

This chapter takes a spatial approach to urban surveillance of women’s clothing in Iran through a historical overview of hijab regulations after the 1979 revolution and the threat of automating such controlling measures. The research defines the forceful implementation of compulsory hijab as a case of spatial injustice, since it regulates, bars, an...

According to the United Nations, schools' closures have impacted up to 99 per cent of the student population in low and lower-middle-income countries. This research-in-progress report introduces a project on Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) measures in the ten member states of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) with a focus on the applicati...

The drug problem has always been granted a national-level priority in Iran since the Islamic Revolution, with the exception of the Iran–Iraq War period. Drug management has been mostly in the hands of officials with security or judicial backgrounds, leading to the dominance of policies with a leaning towards law enforcement. Although those mandated...