Dr. Bahman Khodadadi is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School. He previously held fellowships at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for the 2025–2026 academic year, the Program in Islamic Law at Harvard Law School and the Library of Congress for the 2024–2025 academic year, and served as a Research Associate at the Abdallah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law and Civilization at Yale Law School for the 2023–2024 academic year. His research expertise lies in Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, with a particular focus on Shīʿī Islamic jurisprudence. His scholarship spans Iranian studies, the sociology of law, the history of Islamic law, criminal law theory, and the politico-juridical dynamics of Shīʿī legal traditions.
Dr. Khodadadi earned his PhD in Islamic Studies from the University of Münster in 2023, graduating summa cum laude. His book,
On Theocratic Criminal Law: The Rule of Religion and Punishment in Iran (Oxford University Press), has been widely endorsed by leading scholars in the field. He has published extensively in prominent journals such as
Iranian Studies,
Political Studies Forum,
Journal of Islamic Law, Journal of Criminal Law Research,
Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft (ZStW), and
the Yale Journal of Law & the Humanities (Vol. 35). His recent article appeared in
the Journal of Law and Religion (Cambridge University Press). He has also contributed essays to
the Islamic Law Blog (Harvard University). Forthcoming publications include works in the and the Cambridge Handbook of Islamic Law and the Oxford Handbook of Modern Iranian Religions. Dr. Khodadadi is an active academic editor and peer reviewer, having contributed to journals such as the Journal of Politics (University of Chicago), Journal of Islamic Law (Harvard), British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Millah: Journal of Religious Studies, and Cogent Social Sciences (Taylor & Francis), as well as to book publishers such as Routledge and Bloomsbury Academic Among his honors, he received the Harry Westermann Award for the best doctoral dissertation at the University of Münster and two prestigious DAAD awards (2016, 2023). From 2015 to 2023, he was affiliated with the Excellence Cluster “Religion and Politics” in Germany, contributing to several interdisciplinary research projects.
ResearchGate:
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bahman-Khodadadi-2Email: bahman_khodadadi@hks.harvard.edu
