Professor Omid Payrow Shabani received his B.A. and M.A. from Carleton University (1993 and 1995, respectively) and his Ph.D. from the University of Ottawa (2000). In 2002 he was awarded an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the New School for Social Research in New York City. In 2003 he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Guelph and has been teaching there ever since. Professor Payrow Shabani’s areas of specialization are social and political philosophy, and his research interests include Critical Theory, German Idealism, contemporary continental philosophy, minority rights, and theories of democracy and justice. He obtained the rank of full Professor in 2013. Some of his writings are Democracy, Power and legitimacy: Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, (University of Toronto Press, 2003), “To be a Courtier in the Islamic Republic of Iran” (Political Theory, 2015), and “Reading Habermas in Iran: Political Tolerance and the Prospect of Non-violent Movement in Iran” (Journal of Global Ethics, 2010).
