Daily life in Iran

Friday March 20, 2009 – 7:30 p.m. at the Almonte United Church Social Hall

Speaker: Warren Thorngate

Topic: Daily life in Iran

Synopsis:

Just as Canada is more than hockey, winter and Celine Dion, Iran is more than beards, chadors, friday prayers, fiery rhetoric, and rumours of nuclear weapons development. His twenty teaching visits to Iran since 1993 have given the gift of learning — about Iran culture, its complexities and contradictions, and about the humanity of Iranians revealed in their daily life. In words, photos and videos of Iranian families going about their daily acts of living, he will share some of this gift. Included will be stories of education, child rearing, meals, work, leisure, relations between men and women, public and private selves, and the delicate navigation of an Islamic toilet. He may also hope to bring some of his Iranian students to help answer questions.

Speaker’s Profile:

Another in a long line of aging social psychology professors, Warren graduated from UBC and taught at the University of Alberta for nine years before jumping to Carleton in 1979. Though he specializes in research on the psychology of decision making, random acts of fate led him to undertake research and teaching throughout Latin America, Poland, Russia and eventually Iran, where he now serves as Scientific Director of the Centre for Social Psychology Research at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran. Finalist, then loser, in TVO’s first Best Professor contest, Warren was a co-founder of Opera Lyra Ottawa and the National Capital FreeNet. He lives with Barbara Carroll by the high school playing field in Almonte, where they can frequently be seen pulled by their chocolate lab, Abby.