c:o/re Fellow 10/26 – 09/27
Dr. phil. Nassim Mehran is an urban sociologist trained in architecture and urban design. She is a senior researcher and lecturer with the Einstein Circle Urban Mental Health Strategy at Charité–Universitätsmedizin Berlin and enviroME at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and teaches at Berlin University of the Arts.
Her research examines the social ecology of health and care, particularly mental health. She studies how urban structures, infrastructures, governance, environmental breakdown, and migration intersect to shape vulnerability and inequality. Central to her work is knowledge production: whose experiences are recognised, which forms of expertise acquire authority, and how social and institutional contexts—including constraints on academic freedom—shape the ethical and methodological conditions of research.
Her work connects urban sociology and neurourbanism with critical urban and environmental studies, digital geography, critical mental-health research, science and technology studies, and political studies. Grounded in inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration, it draws on local and international stakeholder networks. She focuses on Germany, particularly Berlin, and the Middle East, especially Iran.
Crisis Epistemologies and Digital Mental-Health Infrastructures in Iran
The project investigates how mental-health knowledge is produced, circulated, negotiated, and trusted under conditions of prolonged and overlapping crisis in Iran. Political repression, economic insecurity, environmental deterioration, war, censorship, and infrastructural disruption affect not only psychological well-being but also the institutions and communication environments through which distress becomes intelligible and care becomes accessible.
The project approaches digital platforms—including Instagram, X/Twitter, and public Telegram channels—not merely as communication tools, but as epistemic infrastructures. These environments shape which forms of mental-health knowledge become visible, who is recognised as an authoritative knowledge actor, how professional and experiential knowledge interact, and which experiences remain marginalised or difficult to articulate. They may facilitate access, transnational exchange, mutual support, and the discussion of stigmatised experiences, while also reproducing inequalities, commercialising therapeutic authority, simplifying psychological concepts, and translating structural suffering into individualised diagnoses.
Using a mixed-methods design, the research combines qualitative interviews, an online survey, and the analysis of publicly accessible digital material. It examines relationships among professional, academic, experiential, community-based, and digitally mediated forms of knowledge, with particular attention to authority, trust, inequality, psychologisation, internet restrictions, and possibilities for care, solidarity, and repair.
Iran constitutes the project’s primary empirical field, including its transnational and diasporic connections. Research previously conducted in Berlin provides an analytical background rather than a second comparative field site. Through this approach, the project contributes to science and technology studies, critical mental-health research, and digital studies by examining how knowledge and care are reorganised when crisis becomes an enduring condition rather than a temporary exception.
Publications (selection)
Vadiati, N., & Mehran N. (2025). Smart Mandate in Iranian Cities: From Digital Sovereignty to the Automated Oppression of Everyday Life. Dialogues on Digital Society 1 (3): 283–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/29768640251375558.
Cavender, C., Melzer, A. & Mehran, N. (2025). Tackling Loneliness in Berlin: A Scoping Review Integrating an Inter- and Transdisciplinary Framework. Journal of Public Health, ahead of print, December 12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-025-02657-0.
Dilger, H., Geeraert, J., Goronga, T., Mair, L., Mehran, N., Probst, U., Frankfurter, R., Greiwe, V.-L., Jaeger, M., Kluge, U., Pape, J., Plummer, J., Strohmeier, H., Vonk, L., & Holmes, S. M. (2025). Grounding Global Health in Care: Connecting Decoloniality and Migration through Racialization. Global Public Health 20 (1): 2480646. https://doi.org/10.1080/17441692.2025.2480646.
Mehran, N., Kluge, U., & Adli M. (2024). The CITY & the PSYCHE—A Chronology. In Environmental Neuroscience, edited by Simone Kühn. Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-64699-7_14.
Mehran N., Abi Jumaa J., Lazaridou F., Foroutan N., Heinz A., & Kluge U. (2022). Spatiality of Social Stress Experienced by Refugee Women in Initial Reception Centers. Journal of International Migration and Integration 23 (4): 1685–709. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-021-00890-6.