Golbarg Rekabtalaei is a cultural and social historian of modern Iran and modern Middle East at large. Her research focuses on the relationships between culture and cultural production, modernity, cosmopolitanism, urbanisation, nationalism, and revolutions. More specifically, she is interested in the role of cinema, in concrete form and onscreen, in facilitating cosmopolitan imaginations and hybrid subjectivities in early twentieth century Iran. Her book, Iranian Cosmopolitanism: A Cinematic History, was published in Cambridge University Press's Global Middle East book series in 2019.

Rekabtalaei was a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow at North Carolina State University from 2015 to 2017. At Seton Hall, she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of the Middle East, as well as World History I and II. Rekabtalaei is also the Co-Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Seton Hall University.