Milad Mohebali Assistant Professor

Ph.D., Educational Policy and Leadership Studies, University of Iowa, 2022
Graduate Certificate, Gender, Women’s, & Sexuality Studies, University of Iowa, 2022
M.S., Higher Education Administration, Oklahoma State University, 2017
M.S., Materials Science and Engineering, K. N. Toosi University of Technology, 2010
B.S., Metallurgical Engineering, Amirkabir Univeristy of Technology, 2008

Dr. Mohebali is a material scientist, educator, and humanist. His interdisciplinary research broadly focuses on social justice in education and decolonization. Originally from Iran, he studies how systems of oppression operate locally, nationally, and globally through higher education with the goal of disrupting dynamics of power across contexts. Milad draws from a wide range of methodologies, data sources, and theoretical perspectives in his three strands of research:1) He examines how racism and coloniality function in higher education as an institution. He approaches this work by drawing and contributing to the sociology of higher education. 2) He investigates the experiences of material hardship and precarity among college students with the goal of informing policy and practice. 3) He studies difficult dialogues around systems of oppression and how such dialogue can create belonging beyond colonized ways of being. .



Areas of Expertise

  • Knowledge/Power in Higher Education
  • Basic Needs Insecurity
  • Difficult Dialogues
  • Sociology of Higher Education
  • Critical Qualitative Methods

Dr. Mohebali teaches classes in Ed.D. and Ph.D. programs, as well as the M.A. in Higher Education Administration program. He advises doctoral students in Educational Administration. Dr. Mohebali’s goal as an educator is to be with the students and to create trusting and inclusive environments where students can learn across difference and in community to become more like who they are and reach their full potential as critical thinkers and leaders.

  • Dr. Mohebali is currently working on a research project on the construction of (un)belonging at college using situational analysis.
  • EDAD 830: Administrative Theory in Educational Organizations