Bio

Mostafa Vaziri was educated in political science, sociology, anthropology and medicine at Louisiana State University (B.A.), Université de Paris (Master and Doctorate), and Universität Innsbruck-Medizinische Fakultät – Medical School (Doctorate, M.D.). He has taught humanities, anthropology of religion, and intercultural studies in US and Austrian universities since 1986. For more than a decade, he also worked as a volunteer medical doctor in Nepal, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan (Afghan refugee camps). Over the course of the years, he has served as a chief physician in Lesotho with Partners In Health (PIH: a Boston-based medical organization), was also a Health & Nutrition consultant with UNICEF and WFP in Sudan and Afghanistan, and was advisor to the Royal Education Council (REC) in Bhutan.

He is also the founder of a charity organization, Medical, Education and Peace Organization (MEPO) in 1999, which served people (free health camps, food aid, women empowerment projects, establishing schools and clinics) in several underdeveloped countries. Through MEPO, Mostafa co-founded a Montessori home-based orphanage-school in Kabul in 2002. MEPO is still committed to support in Afghanistan (until present), including aid to those in need through food and medical aid, and a new MEPO Montessori preschool for destitute children founded in 2022.

Formerly fellow of University of California, Berkeley and Princeton University, he currently teaches anthropology of religion and intercultural philosophy of India and Central Asia, including Vedanta, Sufi, Zen, and Buddhist thought, at the Universität Innsbruck, Austria. (See academic publications). His research also focuses on classical Persian poetry, Silk Road intellectual heritage and post-colonial Orientalism. He has also studied various European and Middle Eastern languages and scripts in addition to Devanagari (Nepali and Hindi), and Amazigh (Berber) of Northwest Africa. Mostafa has been awarded honorary citizenship by the government of Austria for his academic and social contributions.

Personal and Social interest: Emphasizing global justice and social and individual behavioral change by applying cross-cultural wisdom to remove the detrimental barriers of ‘us versus them’.