May 20, 2022
The Right Honorable Baroness Afshar, the sole Iranian-born member of the British House of Lords, died May 12, aged 77.
Haleh Afshar was formally inducted into the House of Lords in December 2007, as Baroness Afshar of Heslington in the County of North Yorkshire. She was one of the 222 female peers in the House of Lords.
Afshar was born in 1944 in Tehran. At 14, she was enrolled in a boarding school in England. After graduating with a BA from the University of York, Haleh Afshar received a PhD from Cambridge University.
She then returned to Iran and joined the civil service, working with the Ministry of Land Reform and as a journalist. She worked for the English-language Kayhan International before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Her father, Dr. Hossein Afshar, was a distinguished law professor at Tehran University’s law school. He was also a close friend of Mostafa Mesbahzadeh, the founder of Kayhan Publishing.
Afshar eventually returned to the UK, pursuing her academic career and becoming a full professor at the University of York, teaching politics and women’s studies.
Baroness Afshar wrote two books, “Islam and Feminisms: An Iranian Case Study” (Macmillan, 1998) and “Islam and the Post-Revolutionary State in Iran” (Macmillan, 1994).
The government named her a “life peer” in respect for her professional work and seated her in the House of Lords in 2007. The term “life peer” means her title is not inheritable.
