Journalist

Biography

Roya is a cultural analysis specialized in petroculture studies with a focus on Iran and the Persian Gulf. She received her first MA in postcolonial literature at the University of Malaya, Malaysia, and her second MA in Middle Eastern Studies at Leiden University, Netherlands. Last December she defended her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA). She is a cosmopolitan researcher, lived and worked in southeast Asia, Europe, and the USA for the last 15 years. Her dissertation title is “Crude Oil and False Promises of Modernization: Petroleum Encounter in Modern Iranian Fiction,” in which she analyses the symbolic and imagery aspects of petroleum modernity on Iranian modern fiction. She is currently working on two book agreements in Iran while working as a journalist writing about Energy ethics and Energy Humanities at Iran’s daily newspapers. Currently she is busy with research on the petroculture aspects of Tehran, as an “Invisible Oil City.”