I am Hajar Ghorbani, a PhD candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Alberta. My research is situated at the intersection of death studies, political anthropology, ethnography, material culture, public memory, and the anthropology of violence. My study has been supported by major Canadian research awards, including the SSHRC Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, ranked 1st and the Killam Scholarship. My doctoral work examines the social and political agency of dead bodies in contemporary Iran. I study how bodies, cemeteries, mourning rituals, images, objects, and public acts of grief become part of broader struggles over legitimacy, memory, state power, and justice.  My background in art shapes my approach to anthropology.…