Biography:

Nina Farnia is a second year doctoral student in the Department of History at UC Davis, studying U.S. colonialism and empire in the Middle East.  Prior to attending Davis, she worked in the fields of law and policy, and participated on the legal teams for major racial profiling and employment discrimination class actions including Dukes v. Wal-Mart, the largest civil rights class action in U.S. history, and Fazaga v. FBI, which challenged the FBI’s secret surveillance practices of Muslims in Southern California.  While in law school, she specialized in Critical Race Studies, and clerked for the law offices of Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi and Nasrin Sotoodeh in Tehran, Iran. Nina has been published in the Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East,UCLA Women’s Law Journal, Middle East Report, The Daily Journal, Badjens Iranian Feminist Magazine, and Tehran Avenue. She continues to present in academic, legal and community-based settings on U.S. national security policy, U.S. foreign policy and empire, government repression, social movements and community activism.