Firuzeh Shokooh Valle Assistant Professor of Sociology

Firuzeh Shokooh Valle is a feminist sociologist and journalist from Puerto Rico. Her research examines how global development policy and discourse frames the relationships between gender, technology, and science, and the ways in which feminist digital activists mobilize around these issues in Latin America and other regions of the global South. Her work is located within a southern political geography that is in contention with the legacy, and persistence, of colonialism. Her book “In Defense of Solidarity and Pleasure: Feminist Technopolitics from the Global South” (2023) is published by Stanford University Press. Her current research project, tentatively titled Calculating the Incalculable: Femicides, Data, and Justice, examines the work of feminist organizations involved in counting femicides in Chile, Guatemala, and Puerto Rico. The purpose of this study is to understand the meanings and struggles behind the collection of data on femicides in the era of datafication, as well as the forms of governance that emerge from state and transnational femicide data collection policies and discourses.

Firuzeh has authored and co-authored academic articles published in the peer-reviewed journals Sociology of Development, Feminist Media Studies, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, and Social Movement Studies. As a journalist, she has covered violence against women and gender politics, racism, poverty and socioeconomic development, and migration in Puerto Rico. She has earned numerous national awards for her journalistic investigative work. She is the former Spanish Language Editor of the independent multilingual digital media publication Global Voices Online, where she mentored numerous aspiring journalists and women of color. Firuzeh has also done volunteer work with grassroots women’s organizations helping them design social media strategies that reflect their vision.