Hello and welcome –
I’m Zep Kalb, a sociologist and Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University.
My research lies at the intersections of global & transnational sociology, economic sociology, political sociology, and culture. My work integrates qualitative and quantitative methods, though I also retain a keen interest in comparative-historical approaches. Many of my projects use data from Iran, Turkey, and other cases in West Asia and the Middle East & North Africa region.
I’m currently involved in three broad lines of research. One line of research studies questions around economic development and ‘illiberal’ capitalism, including how labor institutions can support economic resilience, the long-term and intergenerational effects of state intervention in land ownership, and corporate network interlocks.
Building on my PhD dissertation, a second line of research investigates welfare transformations and sources of worker power in the developing world, especially in relation to intensifying interstate rivalries, economic securitization, and what some scholars call ‘post-neoliberalism’.
A third line of research takes a cultural turn. I love movies and I’ve written extensively about non-Hollywood and global arthouse film. In more academic work, I’m especially interested in the relationship between prestige, trust, and cultural production in non-democratic contexts.
My research has been published in journals such as Development and Change, the Journal of Agrarian Change, Middle Eastern Studies, Mediterranean Politics, Iranian Studies, and the New Left Review. I’ve also written for more public outlets such as Phenomenal World, Foreign Policy, Al Monitor, Sharq, the WP’s Monkey Cage, Jadaliyya, MERIP, and the Project on Middle East Political Science. My work has received attention from news outlets like CNN, The Washington Post, Keyhan, and Jacobin. In 2021-22, I was a Visiting Fellow at the Bourse and Bazaar Foundation.
I completed my PhD in Sociology at UCLA. I lived in Iran for several years, where I studied at the University of Tehran and worked as a journalist for a local financial newspaper. I grew up in north-western Europe and received my BA in Economics from SOAS. I speak fluent Persian and some Turkish, too.
2-S-9 Green Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544
zepkalb at princeton dot edu