Behnaz Mirzai is Full Professor of Middle Eastern History at Brock University, Canada. From 2005 to 2006, she held a teaching position at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, USA. She is currently a Senior Guest Researcher at the Bonn Centre for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany. In 2024, she was a Visiting Professor at the Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, and in 2023, at Unité de recherches Migrations et société (URMIS), Université Côte d’Azur, Nice.
She is the author of A History of Slavery and Emancipation in Iran, 1800–1929, a finalist for the 2018 Canadian Historical Association Wallace K. Ferguson Prize. The book has been translated into Persian twice—by Andishe-yi Ihsan in 2024 and Nashr-i Tarikh-i Iran in 2017. It remains the first comprehensive study dedicated to slavery in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Iran. Her most recent book, The Life of an Enslaved African in the Ottoman Empire and Iran: Autobiography of Mahboob Qirvanian (University of Toronto Press), presents the first autobiography of an enslaved African in the region. It tells the story of Mahboob Qirvanian, born and enslaved in Tunisia in 1894 and later freed in Iran.
Mirzai’s research combines historical and anthropological methods. She has conducted fieldwork in Zanzibar, Tanzania, and in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan region and southern provinces. She has produced two documentary films: Afro-Iranian Lives, which received a Special Mention at the 10th annual Zanzibar International Film Festival, and The African-Baluchi Trance Dance. Her work has been screened at international academic festivals, including a UNESCO-supported event commemorating the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Zanzibar.
She has authored numerous scholarly articles on slavery and the African diaspora in the Indian Ocean world. Her edited and co-edited volumes include The Baluchi and Baluchistan, Slavery, Islam and Diaspora, and Africa and Its Diasporas: Rethinking Struggles for Recognition and Empowerment. She has also curated photographic exhibitions, including Eyes in the Desert and Baluchi Identity and Culture.
She has received several research grants, including multiple awards from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She currently serves on the editorial advisory boards of The Encyclopaedia Iranica and the Slavery and Emancipation series published by Amsterdam University Press. Her institutional affiliations include the University of Toronto, York University (Canada), the University of Bonn, and GIGA/Hamburg University (Germany).
Mirzai’s interdisciplinary work encompasses historical research, ethnography, and film studies. Her scholarship explores the experiences of descendants of enslaved African communities, their interactions with other ethnic groups, African-derived religious practices, and spirit-possession cults in Iran and the Middle East. She also investigates how these cultural practices have transformed over time.
As the 2025 Ali A. Mazrui Senior Fellow in Global African Studies at The Africa Institute, she is developing a new book on cultural and artistic identity in cross-border societies of the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean. The project offers important insights into cultural and artistic exchanges among diverse ethnic groups across the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Indian Ocean regions, with particular attention to music, art, and dance. Its objective is to identify and interpret the cultural practices of diasporic African communities and examine their impact on identity formation and transformation within these interconnected geographies.
Email me