An anthropologist by training, Negar Razavi joined Princeton University's Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies, from Northwestern University. The research project she's working on is titled: "The Security Paradox: Policy Expertise, Transnational Security, and the Politics of Knowing (and Unknowing) Iran from Washington." Intersecting political science and anthropology, Razavi's research brings a critical, people-centered approach to studies of international security, gender, expertise, and empire to U.S.-Iran relations. Her proposed project draws on ethnographic fieldwork in Washington D.C. and Tehran where she evaluated the expanding influence of a transnational network of policy experts in shaping U.S. security policies toward Iran and the broader Middle East. She explores how and why non-state analysts have collectively promoted security approaches toward the Islamic Republic that not only exacerbate insecurities for local communities but seem to contradict the U.S.' stated security objective. Her Ph.D interests in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania State concentrated on political subjectivities, citizenship, and knowledge formation. Her dissertation title: “With Grave Concern”: Policy Experts, National Security, and U.S. Policy towards the “Middle East.”