Before the recent reversal, Iranian women had long been banned—and still are—from spectatorship in a number of sports. Taking our cue from Sahar’s case and its connection to the ban, we locate Sahar at the epicenter of what we call a "politics of pity." We argue that the mediatization of Sahar’s..
Nazanin Shahrokni and Spyros A. Sofos
Nazanin Shahrokni is Assistant Professor of Gender Studies at London School of Economics. She is the author of Women in Place: The Politics of Gender Segregation in Iran.
Spyros A. Sofos is a Senior Fellow at the Middle East Centre of the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is lead editor of #RethinkingPopulism. His publications include Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism (<Edinburgh University Press 2022); Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks (Palgrave Macmillan 2013); Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (Columbia University Press 2008); Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe (Routledge 1997).