Farzaneh Hemmasi is a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at Columbia University. Her dissertation focuses on Iranian popular musicians and media producers in the North American and European diaspora and their methods and motivations for creating mediated musical products and on- and off-line social networks that aim to reach the Iranian transnation and forward a social and cultural critique. Ethnographic research for the project has taken place in Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco, Amsterdam and Tehran and has been supported by grants from the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC, a P.E.O. Sisterhood Scholar Award, and Columbia University.

Ms. Hemmasi is currently a Mellon Graduate Fellow within Columbia University’s Institute for Social and Economic Policy and Research and holds a Lane Cooper Fellowship from the University in support of her dissertation writing. Her graduate work at Columbia has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Foreign Language and Area Studies program and Columbia University's Teaching and Hutner Fellowships. She has presented papers at annual meetings of the Society for Ethnomusicology, the American Anthropological Association and the International Society for Iranian Studies. Prior to her graduate career, Ms. Hemmasi worked as a Program Associate within the Open Society Institute, as a researcher for Rutgers University’s Center for Urban Policy Research, and as a writer for several music-oriented websites.