Atyeh Ashtari is a Ph.D. student in Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Atyeh’s research looks at the relationship between gender and space. She is interested in the dialectics of this relationship focusing on the “gendered forms of governance” and how gendered norms and practices and the micro-politics of gendered space may work toward “liberation of space”. Her research will take place in Zahedan, Iran.