Sara Karimzadeh

Om Sara Karimzadeh

About Sara Karimzadeh

Sara Karimzadeh is a postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Within the framework of a Marie S. Curie Actions project, via Horizon 2020, she is active at the Unit of Sociology and Gender Studies. She holds a PhD in Economic Sociology and Sociology of Development from the University of Tabriz in Iran, 2018

Research

Her research project is about ethical consumption, and she compares Iran to Sweden. The aim is to understand the impact of prevailing social structures, norms and conventions on the conditions for ethical consumption.

Based on her doctoral thesis – an exploratory study of the underlying sociological causes of (un)sustainable consumption in Iran – Sara Karimzadeh has developed a model for studying socio-individual reasons for the prevailing patterns of consumption. With this study, she contributed to a better understanding of how prevailing mechanisms and structures in society affect the individual's (un)sustainable consumption patterns. The research results are published in a book in Persian on reflexive consumption.

In a previous postdoctoral project at the Iranian State Research Institute, The Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) (2019-2020), Sara Karimzadeh studied the energy transition in Iran. In that project, she developed an integrated theoretical model based on various existing models for the acceptance and dissemination of technology and innovation in society. The aim was specifically to identify what factors influence people's acceptance of solar panel technology in rural northern Iran. The project was conducted in Persian, but the results have been published in English: A study of households' intention towards solar panel installation, case study: villagers of the northern regions of Iran.

In Iran, Sara Karimzadeh has been involved in the translation into Persian of Alan Irwin's book on environmental sociology, Sociology and the Environment. Another book she also translated into Persian, with students in social sciences and sociology interested as intended audiences, is How Can We Solve Our Social Problems by James Crone. This book is being published in Iran.

Teaching

Sara Karimzadeh teaches at undergraduate level in areas such as introduction to sociology, developing countries' sociology, consumer sociology and method. She also supervises students in essay writing at bachelor's level.