Jaleh Jalili is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Rice University. Her research interests include urban sociology, social movements, space and place, cultural sociology, gender, and inequality. Her work explores how public spaces mediate social relations in rapidly changing urban environments and examines the social, political, and cultural meanings of space. She is a recipient of a dissertation fellowship from the Mellon Foundation and a travel award from the Crown Center for Middle East Studies. She has presented extensively at conferences, and her published and forthcoming articles appear in Social Problems, The Middle East Journal, Frontiers, and as book chapters in edited volumes.

Jaleh received her doctoral degree in sociology from Brandeis University in 2018. She also holds an M.A in Urban Design from the University of Tehran and a B.A. in architecture from Beheshti University. Before joining Rice University, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College (2017-2019), where she taught courses on urban sociology, social movements, and research methods.