About Dr. Hamaseh Kianfar

Dr. Hamaseh Kianfar has a doctoral degree in education with focus on Organization and Leadership, and a Master Degree in Counseling Psychology. Dr. Kianfar has worked with HIV positive women and children providing integrated medical and psychosocial services to the infected. Using the interpretive approach and applied narrative identity theory, her researches in this field have focused on helping improve public policies and education programs related to HIV. Dr. Kianfar’s professional experience includes HIV outreach development, with focus on prevention and education to non-profit organizations in Thailand, Lao PDR and the Union of Myanmar, and she has also served as medical case manager, advocating and providing home-based medical and psychological case management for homeless women living with disabling HIV disease, in northern California. Dr. Kianfar also worked as a Mental Health Specialist performing regular diagnostic court evaluations, worked with the families and public defenders of minors to ensure that the psychological needs of the minors are addressed; worked as Mental Health Counselor and case management, Psychodiagnostic evaluations and group therapy for incarcerated from a wide variety of cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, in the Bay Area. In addition, she has also worked in a variety of university and community programs such as the Forgiveness Project at Stanford University: conducting preliminary data entry, analysis and initial testing of data for projects designed to examine the relationship between cardiovascular health and forgiveness; a research project on autism in the Department of Neuroscience at the University of California; Cardiovascular Rehabilitation Project to help with data analysis for an on-going longitudinal study designed to assess whether medical and psychological effects of lifestyle intervention programs designed to reduce cardiac risk factors; and more.

Dr. Kianfar has written many articles and conducted several researches including: Living Positively: Narratives from HIV positive women, looking at effective ways of developing, analyzing and implementing HIV programs and public policies for HIV positive women and children.

Working with Humanitarian Organizations such as UNESCO, UN NGOs, Amnesty International and others Dr. Kianfar has developed programs to advocate for human rights with a focus on women and children’s rights, including Voices for Justice, a global youth organization advocating for women and children’s rights. She also worked with Women’s Wisdom Women in Action program committee in creating forums for dialogue addressing women’s rights, leadership and equality; served in the Program Committee inviting Shirin Ebadi, noble peace laureate, to the Bay Area; and presented in numerous conferences including at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Barcelona, Spain. Dr. Kianfar is bilingual (English and Persian) and has knowledge in French and Spanish.

Hamaseh Kianfar gave a talk on: The role of forgiveness in healing trauma
at the annual Beyond Identification event
Theme: Heart-Based Treatment of Trauma
Saturday March 12, 2022
http://ias.org/departments/sufipsychology/interplay-of-psychology-and-spirituality/