Soraya Tremayne is a social anthropologist and the co-founding Director, with Professor David Parkin, of the Fertility and Reproduction Studies Group (FRSG), School of Anthropology. She is a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology; the co-founder of the seminar series on Women’s Rights in the Middle East at the Middle East Centre at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford; the former Director of the International Gender Studies at the Department for International Development Studies, University of Oxford; the Chair of Social Analysis and Anthropology Associates — SA3 Limited — a consultancy firm that she co-founded with three other anthropologists (1982) specialising in the development and aid projects; Lecturer in Social Anthropology at Tehran University; and Director of the Ethnographic Museum of Tehran. She is also the founding series editor of the Fertility, Reproduction, and Sexuality series, with Berghahn books.

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She served on the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute between 1993 and 2014, as a Council member, a Vice-President, and as a member of the Finance Committee.