Zahra Kamalkhani

Zahra Kamalkhani (born 1954) is an Iranian anthropologist.

Zahra Kamalkhani was educated at the University of Tehran, University of Bergen and SOAS. She subsequently conducted post-doctoral research at Edith Cowan University and the University of Western Australia.

Works Iranian immigrants and refugees in Norway, 1988 Women's Islam: religious practice among women in today's Iran, 1998 In the notes about contributors of the book Kamalkhani was described as PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Bergan.

Kamalkhani's this essay focuses on complex religious rituals of Shiraz women as a unique way of performing their identities and political agency. The gatherings are referred as rowzeh (or rowzeh-zanāneh) which are stories about the Islamic saints (Imams) and oral narratives about the historical events significant for Iranian Shiism.

Women's Islam: religious practice among women in today's Iran (1998) This book was initially published in 1998 based on Zahra Kamalkhani's Ph.D thesis. The book focuses on the religious practices and family rituals of Iranians women, particularly, women from Shiraz, the author's hometown. After returning to Iran in 1989, the author started to attend religious meetings performed and led by women and the idea of researching women's religious activities was born with this quest. As a native Iranian anthropologist, Kamalkhani describes that women-only religious meetings offered Iranian women public space to perform their identities as in most denominations of Islam and in Muslim cultures, women have comparatively limited participation in public space and Mosques.