Haleh Afshar

Haleh Afshar, Baroness Afshar, (; 21 May 1944 – 12 May 2022) was a British life peer in the House of Lords. She had a life-long interest in women's rights and Islamic law. She was a professor at the University of York and she wrote over a dozen scholarly books.

Life and career Haleh Afshar was the eldest of four children born to Hassan Afshar and Pouran Khabir. She was born on 21 May 1944 in Tehran, Iran. Her father was at one point a government minister and he was a professor of law at Tehran University and her mother successfully campaigned for women to gain the vote. She went first to the Jeanne d’Arc school in Tehran.

At the age of 14, she was boarding in Solihull, England to attend school there. She joined the new University of York in England after completing her A-levels in Brighton, England, and she gained her first degree in 1967 in Social Sciences. Five years later she gained a diploma from the University of Strasbourg in France, before completing a doctorate (PhD) in Land Economy at New Hall, Cambridge (now Murray Edwards College) in 1974.

She then returned to work in Iran's land reform ministry. She also worked as a journalist and her research led her to understand that many Iranian women did not understand their Islamic rights. In 1976, she was lecturing at the University of Bradford in England. for services to equal opportunities.

On 18 October 2007, it was announced that she would be made a baroness and join the House of Lords as a cross-bench life peer. She was introduced into the House of Lords on 11 December 2007, as Baroness Afshar, of Heslington in the County of North Yorkshire.

In March 2009, she was named as one of the twenty most successful Muslim women in the UK on the Muslim Women Power List 2009. The list was a collaboration between the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Emel Magazine and The Times, to celebrate the achievements of Muslim women in the UK.

In April 2009, she was appointed an academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Afshar died from kidney failure at her home in Heslington, on 12 May 2022, aged 77.

In January 2013, Afshar was nominated for the Services to Education award at the British Muslim Awards.

In 2017, Afshar received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bradford.

Works Afshar wrote about Iran and Iranian politics both for academia and the media. Her books include Islam and Feminisms: An Iranian Case Study (Macmillan, 1998), and Islam and the Post Revolutionary State in Iran (Macmillan, 1994). She edited thirteen books on women and development.