Research Interests
Alternative Dispute Resolution, Restorative Justice, sexual crimes, violence against women and children, family law, human rights law, legal pluralism, Islamic law, political crimes, criminal law and civil society
Research Area(s)
Middle East, Europe
Profile
Afrooz Maghzi holds an LLM from University College Dublin (Ireland), an LLM in Criminal Law and Criminology from Mazandaran University (Iran), and an LLB from Tehran University (Iran).
She joined the Law & Anthropology Department in January 2019 as a PhD candidate in the research programme Conflict Regulation in Germany’s Plural Society and as a member of the International Max Planck Research School “Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment” (IMPRS REMEP). Prior to coming to the Department, she had conducted the initial phase of her research at the Max Planck Institute of Foreign and International Criminal Law in Freiburg under the auspices of the International Max Planck Research School for Comparative Criminal Law (July 2017 – January 2019).
Before engaging in this research project, Maghzi worked as a lawyer and legal researcher in Iran, Ireland, and Malaysia. Her research to date has focused on the treatment of women in criminal law and family law, criminalization under Islamic law, and the participation of civil society in criminal justice. She began her career as a lawyer in 2003, focusing primarily on victims and suspects of gender-related crimes, family cases related to divorce and separation, and politically motivated cases. Throughout her career she has lectured law students, written policy papers, conducted workshops, and worked with civil society and international human rights organizations.
Why Law & Anthropology?
Since joining the Law & Anthropology Department, I have had the opportunity to look beyond black-letter law and how out-of-court dispute settlements of minority communities are defined and perceived in state law. The conceptual and theoretical sociolegal and anthropological literature on disputes and their resolution has helped me develop a more expansive and inclusive analytical framework that can take into account the structural position of minority groups in relation to the majority group.