Editorial

Touraj Daryaee - Editor

Touraj Daryaee

Professor Touraj Daryaee holds the Maseeh Chair in Persian Studies & Culture, Professor of History and is the Director of the Dr. Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies & Culture at the University of California, Irvine. He has authored and served as the editor of many scholarly works. Among them is Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (2009), winner of the BRISMES 2020 book award in the UK; The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History (2014) chosen as one of the top 25 academic books of the year by Choice magazine and described as “the best single volume on the history of the Iranian world.” Professor Daryaee has also translated several Middle Persian / Pahlavi texts into English, namely Šahrestānīha-ī Ērānšahr: A Middle Persian Text on Late Antique Geography, Epic, and History, with English and Persian Translations and Commentary (2002); On the Explanation of Chess and Backgammon (2016). He has also edited King of the Seven Climes A History of the Ancient Iranian World (3000 BCE - 651 CE) (2021).

He is the editor of DABIR: Digital Archives of Brief Notes and Iran Review with E.J. Brill-De Gruyter, of Sasanian Studies with Otto Harrassowitz, and of the web project Sasanika: Late Antique Near East Project at UC Irvine. Professor Daryaee has been a Professor of History at UC Irvine since 2007 and has been a visiting professor at the École pratique des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris (2010); and the Bahari Senior Fellow, Oxford University (2014). In 2021 Professor Daryaee was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, in Salzburg, Austria whose members are leading scientists, artists, and practitioners who are dedicated to innovative research, interdisciplinary and transnational collaboration as well as the exchange and dissemination of knowledge. Academy members are elected for their outstanding achievements in science, arts, and governance.

 

Mateo Farzaneh - Managing Editor

Mateo Farzaneh

Dr. Mateo Mohammad Farzaneh is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. He is also the Chair of the Political Science Department and the Manager of the Cyrus of Persia Scholarship at the University's Institutional Advancement where until recently he served as the Principal of the Mossadegh the Mossadegh Initiative (the Mossadegh Servant Leaders Fund). In 2025, he was appointed to a three-year term to serve on the Committee on International Historical Activities at the American Historical Association. He served as the Chair of the Biennial Association for Iranian Studies Conference in 2018 held at University of California Irvine and has been an active scholar in the field of Iranian Studies since 2004.

Dr. Farzaneh is an historian of modern Iran and teaches the history of the Modern Middle East, the Islamic Civilization, Moorish Spain, Historiography and Historical Methods, and specialty courses on Iran. He is the author of two award winning books, first of which is about the Iranian Constitutional Revolution and other about the women and gender in the Iran-Iraq War. Currently, he is editing an anthology of the Iranian perspective on the Iran-Iraq War and is also co-authoring the history of Iranian women and gender in sports. 

The Encyclopaedia Iranica Foundation appointed Dr. Farzaneh as the Managing Editor of the Encyclopaedia Iranica in March 2025 where he will oversee the encyclopaedia’s operation and strategy for future growth. He works and lives with his family in Chicago.