Parviz Piran Information

Dr. Parviz Piran

Sociologist, Development Theorist, and University Professor
Born: September 1, 1950 – Hamedan, Iran

Parviz Piran is a prominent Iranian sociologist known for his groundbreaking contributions to social development, urban studies, spatial justice, citizen participation, and applied sociology. His interdisciplinary work has helped shape contemporary debates on poverty, informal settlements, and democratic urban governance in Iran.

Education and Academic Background

Born in the city of Hamedan, Piran completed his primary and secondary education in Hamedan, Sahneh, and Kermanshah. In 1970, he earned his high school diploma in mathematics and entered the Department of Sociology at the National University of Iran (now Shahid Beheshti University), graduating in 1974.

He then moved to the United States, where he earned a Master’s degree from Morehead State University. His thesis, supervised by renowned criminologist Prof. Poly Forp, examined the social-psychological impact of racism through the analysis of white authors’ poetry about African Americans.

He continued his doctoral studies at the University of Kansas, where he specialized in historical sociology and the historiography of the French Annales School. After completing his Ph.D., he served as a faculty member teaching graduate and doctoral courses at the University of Kansas for four years.

After the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Piran returned to Iran and joined several leading universities as a lecturer and researcher, including Allameh Tabataba’i University, the University of Tehran (School of Fine Arts and Earth Sciences), and Shahid Beheshti University (Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning).

International Roles and Scientific Affiliations

• Senior Advisor to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) since 1999
• Scientific Board Member, Swiss Academy for Development, since 2003
• Member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Children, Youth and Environments Journal, University of Colorado, USA
• Member of editorial boards for various Iranian academic journals, including Social Welfare and Architecture and Culture

Research, Projects, and Innovations

Dr. Piran has consistently advocated for locally grounded, participatory approaches to development. Among his most notable initiatives are:

• The “School Mayor” project, presented at the 4th International Congress of Educating Cities in Chicago (1997), which was selected as one of 17 exemplary proposals among 560 submissions. It was recognized by UNESCO as a successful model of civic education.
• Poverty Alleviation Program for Shirabad, Zahedan, honored by UNESCO as a model intervention.
• His article “Urban Scale and Architectural Scale”, presented at the University of Florence (Italy), was later published in Urban Morphology, the journal of the International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF). It explores the failure of “citizenship” in Iranian cities due to authoritarian urban design practices.

He also introduced a unique geopolitical and geostrategic theory of Iranian society, following two decades of historical research conducted alongside his students. This culminated in his seminal paper: “Strategy and Territorial Politics in Iranian Society”.

Publications

• Authored or co-authored seven books in English, published by the UN and affiliated agencies:
  • Poverty Alleviation in Sistan and Baluchestan: The Case of Shirabad (UNDP, 2002)
  • Socio-Cultural Factors and Reproductive Health in Rural Iran (UNFPA & CWP, 2005)
  • Vulnerable Children in Tehran: Status, Problems, Needs and Services Offered (CPI, 2007)
• Over 50 articles in Persian and 10 academic papers in English
• Wrote the introduction to the Persian translation of Fernand Braudel’s Capitalism and Material Life, published by Nashr-e Ney in 1993

Challenges and Public Engagement

While in the U.S. pursuing his Ph.D., Piran worked at a car wash to support himself financially—a personal anecdote he often references as part of his lived experience of systemic inequities. He has also collaborated on several UN and World Bank-funded projects focused on impact assessments, urban sanitation, and national poverty mapping.

In 2013, upon returning to Allameh Tabataba’i University, he discovered that his office had been emptied and his documents moved to a breakroom—a symbolic episode reflecting broader academic and institutional challenges in Iran.