My research offers new insights into the role of social media images in protest, showing how digitally shared pictures and videos may not only complement but substitute key aspects of traditional mobilization processes such as identity formation, strategy, and organized dissent. 

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Through an examination of the Iranian women's movement, I show how women’s use of Facebook and Instagram to share images of themselves publicly unveiled, singing, dancing, and biking - acts all banned under the Islamic Republic - served as a cornerstone of resistance to gender-discriminatory laws for over a decade. Images helped women circumvent the barriers to mass mobilization in an otherwise authoritarian context, undermined state mechanisms of control meant to systematically suppress acts of gender defiance before they can even surface, and contested state gender norms through a competing gender ideology based on joy, solidarity, and the normalization of everyday bodily expressions.

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Over time, women taught one another strategies of resistance by imitating poses and actions seen in other images, effectively replacing the hierarchical instruction typical of social movement organizations. They introduced new ideas on gender, sex, and male-female relations which transferred to the public sphere, as evidenced by state and societal interactions to women's protests, and navigated state repression with updated tactics, highlighting the decentralized and adaptive nature of "visual protest movements."

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This research has been supported by the American Association of University Women, American Political Science Association, the Center for the Study of Women in Society at the University of Oregon, and the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund, among other organizations.

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Before beginning my academic journey, I worked in nonprofit for several years.