Professor Nacim Pak-Shiraz is Personal Chair in Cinema and Iran, and Head of the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She has published in the fields of visual cultures, constructions of masculinity, and the engagement of religion and film. She has authored Shi’i Islam in Iranian Cinema: Religion and […]
Dr. Fatemeh Shams is a specialist in Persian literature. She earned her Ph.D in Oriental Studies from University of Oxford, Wadham College. Before joining Penn, she taught Persian language and literature in various academic institutions including University of Oxford, University of SOAS and Courtauld Institute of Art in the United Kingdom.
Behrooz Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari received his Ph.D. in Linguistics from Allameh Tabatabaee University in Tehran (2003), and is currently an associate professor in the Department of Performing Arts, University of Tehran. He has published extensively in the areas of Iranian dramatic literature and the discourse analysis of drama. https://youtu.be/WV3YHy57UdA
Sunil Sharma is a professor of Persianate and comparative literature at Boston University. His areas of expertise are Persian and South Asian literatures, and his research interests include poetry and court cultures, the history of the book, and travel writing. His latest book, Mughal Arcadia: Persian Poetry in an Indian Court (Harvard University Press, 2017), […]
The York Centre for Asian Research, the Department of History, and the Department of Languages, Literatures & Linguistics host The Elahe Omidyar Mir-Djalali Lecture Series: Iranian Cinema. Amir Ganjavi, a PhD in communication and culture, is a Toronto-based writer, cultural critic, festival director, community activist, and filmmaker. https://youtu.be/eK_4EtuT4mo
Rivanne Sandler is Professor Emerita at the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Toronto. She is a specialist of early-20th century Iranian women’s poetry. In their vision of a revitalization of the Persian nation modeled on the flourishing countries of Europe, 19th and early 20th c. century intellectuals factored in a female […]
Bio: Dr Mahmoud Pargoo is a research fellow at Alfred Deakin Institute, Deakin University, and the lead author of Presidential Elections in Iran: Islamic idealism since the revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and the author of Secularization of Islam in Post-revolutionary Iran (Routledge, 2021). He has a PhD in Social and Political Thought from Insitute […]
Asal Bagheri has a PhD in Semiology and Linguistics, with a specialization in Iranian cinema. She has written several articles on Iranian cinema in French, English, and Persian. Bagheri has taught Linguistics, Semiology, Communication, and French language courses in different Universities including Sorbonne Paris Descartes, Paris Est Creteil, Paris Est Marne La Vallee, Rennes 1, […]
Bio: Iraj Pezeshkzad is an Iranian writer and author of the famous Persian novel, Dear Uncle Napoleon, which was published to great acclaim in the early 1970s. Abstract: Iraj Pezeshkzad was the 2021 distinguished lecturer for the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Annual Lecture Series, held on 6 June 2021. With over 200 registered guests, Mr. […]
Bio: Homa Hoodfar is a Professor of Anthropology, Emerita, at Concordia University, Montreal. Hoodfar’s field-based research are in political economy and legal anthropology; focusing on reproductive rights; Afghan women and youth refugees in Iran and Pakistan; women in formal and informal politics; hijab and dress codes as political institutions; gender and citizenship; Muslim women’s sports […]
Dominic Parviz Brookshaw is Associate Professor of Persian Literature at the University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow in Persian at Wadham College. Dominic currently serves on the Editorial Board of Middle Eastern Literatures and, from 2004 to 2014, he was Assistant Editor for Iranian Studies. He is a former member of both the Board […]
Bio: Gita Hashemi has been working for over three decades in visual and performance art, digital and net art, and language-based art including live embodied writing, as well as in curation and publishing. Her multi-platform and transdisciplinary projects focus on marginalized narratives and their influence in contemporary contexts. She has received numerous project grants from […]