Tentative Field Editors
Samra Azarnouche (Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes) - Ancient Iranian Languages & Culture
Samra Azarnouche is an expert on pre-Islamic Iran’s religion, Zoroastrianism, including textual sources and scriptural tradition, religious mythology, and the political and social history of late antiquity. Her early work on the religious tradition of Sasanian Iran (3rd-7th century CE) uncovered institutional norms and paradigms in the modes of transmission of sacred knowledge, which are among the signs of the planned institutionalization of a highly hierarchical Zoroastrian clergy. Through the study of a religious corpus still imperfectly accessible, written in Middle Persian (Pahlavi), and directly dependent on the Avesta, she also focuses on the literary, legal, scientific corpus which that the Magi in late antiquity have developed before and after Islam. Since 2017, her work has focused on the important Zoroastrian compendium, the Dēnkard IV, still unpublished, is the project of her next monograph. This Middle Persian text emphasizes three issues: The political theology of the Sasanian dynasty (from the 6th century), religion and science, and the Zoroastrian king as the universal patron of knowledge. As a follow-up to this work on the Dēnkard, it has Professor Azarnouche to explore the influence of neoplatonism on Zoroastrianism or the development of a religious doctrine centered on ontogeny and embryology, which reveal, among other things, the diversity of scientific transfers (Greek and Indian) to Late Antique Iran.
Carlo G. Cereti (UC Irvine & Rome) - Ancient Iranian Religions & Sasanian Empire
Carlo G. Cereti, joined the University of California as Endowed Ferdowsi Chair in Zoroastrian Studies and Prof. of Classics and Religions in 2024, having served since 2000 as Full Professor of Iranian Studies at Sapienza University of Rome, Dept. of Ancient World Studies, from 2009 to 2017 he acted as Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of Italy in Tehran. His earliest research work focused on the history of the Zoroastrian Parsi community in India, an intellectual interest that continued throughout his academic career, though in time his main research field shifted to Middle Iranian Languages and Literatures and more specifically to the study of Zoroastrian literature in Middle Persian. His interest in the medieval and modern history of the Zoroastrian community, combined with an intimate knowledge of Zoroastrian Middle Persian literature and more of Sasanian and post-Sasanian written culture led him to preparing critical editions of Middle Persian texts such as the Zand ī Wahman Yasn and many chapters of the Bundahišn, as well as a work of synthesis on the Pahlavi tradition (La Letteratura Pahlavi) From 2006 onwards he has intensively worked on epigraphic Middle Persian, with a focus on Narseh’s Paikuli inscription and on other epigraphic texts, including seals and sealings as well as ostraca and documents mainly dating to the late Sasanian and early Islamic periods. He is the head of the Paikuli Project in the KRG region of Iraq and of the newly created Kuwait Bay Project in Kuwait. He also acts as senior adviser to the Kermanshah Sasanian Landscape Project in Iran. He has published four books and more than one hundred and fifty articles. He is the General Editor of Sēnmurw. Journal of Iranian Studies and has edited more than a dozen volumes. In the past he has contributed to the following international projects: "Thesaurus Indogermanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien (TITUS)", a database collecting documents in various Indo-european languages (University of Frankfurt), Iranisches Personennamenbuch (ÖAW) and Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidorum, (ÖAW / CNRS / IsIAO). Main research interests: Middle Iranian Languages, Zoroastrianism, Iranian Religions, Epigraphy, Glyptics, Late antique – early medieval history of Iran and surrounding countries
Habibi Borjian (Columbia University) - Persian Dialectology, Linguistics & Modern Iranian History
Habib Borjian received his academic training in the fields of engineering and humanities and has taught and published in both fields. He took graduate courses on Middle East and Central Asia at Columbia University while completing his postgraduate work in solid mechanics. He continued his study of Iranian languages at the University of Tehran and Yerevan State University, where he earned masters and doctorate degrees, respectively. His publications include articles in various journals and edited volumes and three volumes in Persian: Orthography of Iranian Languages, Tabari Texts, and Median Dialects of Isfahan.
- Dominic Brookshaw (University of Oxford)
- Medieval and Early Modern Persian literature
Nasrin Rahimieh (UC Irvine) - Modern Persian Literature
Nasrin Rahimieh is Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature and Associate Dean for Academic Personnel in the School of Humanities at UC Irvine. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Iranian Studies. Her teaching and research are focused on modern Persian literature, the literature of Iranian exile and diaspora, contemporary Iranian women’s writing, and post-revolution Iranian cinema. Among her publications are Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity (2015), Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry (2010 and 2023) co-edited with Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History (2001), the English translation of the late Taghi Modarressi’s last novel, The Virgin of Solitude (2008), and Oriental Responses to the West (1990). Her current project is on contemporary Iranian women’s literature.
Matthew P. Canepa (UC Irvine) - Ancient Iranian Art & Archaeology
Matthew P. Canepa is Professor of Art History and Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Presidential Chair in Art History and Archaeology of Ancient Iran at University of California, Irvine. An historian of art, archaeology and religions his research focuses on the intersection of art, ritual and power in the eastern Mediterranean, Persia and the wider Iranian world. Professor Canepa’s research interests center on the co-constituency of the built, ritual, and natural environments in creating and sustaining cultural memory, power, and identity. His most recent book is entitled The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity through Landscape, Architecture, and the Built Environment 550 BCE – 642 CE (University of California Press, 2018; paperback ed. 2020). It is a large-scale study of the transformation of Iranian cosmologies, landscapes and architecture from the height of the Achaemenids to the coming of Islam. His publications include The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran (University of California Press, 2009; paperback ed. 2017), the first book to analyze the artistic, ritual and ideological interactions between the late Roman and Sasanian empires in a comprehensive and theoretically rigorous manner. His recent work focuses on the impact of Iranian visual and spatial cultures on the Afro-Eurasian world; a re-examination of Parthian silver and aristocratic culture; the problem of time and memory in Perso-Iranian cultures. He is the Director of UCI's Graduate Specialization in Ancient Iran and the Premodern Persianate World.
Talinn Grigor (UC Davis) - Contemporary Iranian Art, Architect., Urban St.
Talinn Grigor’s research focuses on 18th- to 20th-century architectural and art histories through postcolonial, race, feminist, and critical theories grounded in Iran, Armeno-Iran, Armenia, and Parsi India. Her books include the winner of the Saidi-Sirjani Book Award, The Persian Revival (2021), Contemporary Iranian Art (2014), Building Iran (2009), and Persian Kingship and Architecture (2015) coedited with Sussan Babaie. Grigor has received fellowships from the National Gallery of Art, Getty Research Institute, Cornell’s Humanities Center, Princeton’s Persian Center, MIT’s Aga Khan Program, SSRC, and Persian Heritage and Gulbenkian foundations. Her last book is coauthored with Houri Berberian, The Armenian Woman, Minoritarian Agency, and the Making of Iranian Modernity, 1860–1979 (Stanford University Press, 2025).
Layla Diba (Brooklyn Museum of Art) - Persianate Islamic Art
Layla S. Diba is an independent art advisor, scholar and curator specializing in the art of 19th and 20th century Iran. She has been the Director and Chief Curator of the Negarestan Museum of 18th and 19th century Iranian Art in Tehran from 1975-78 and the Brooklyn Museum of Art’s Curator of Islamic Art from 1990-2000 where she organized the groundbreaking exhibition Royal Persian Paintings: The Qajar Epoch (1785-1925) and edited and co-authored the accompanying publication. In 2013 she co-curated the exhibition Iran Modern at Asia Society Museum in New York and co-edited the accompanying catalogue. She has written widely on Persian and Islamic Art and currently serves on the Visiting Committee of the Department of Islamic Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art and on the Board of the Soudavar Memorial Foundation.
Amir-Hosein Pourjavadi (University of Tehran) - Persianate Music & Culture
Amir Hosein Pourjavady earned his first Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures from UCLA and his second Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from the CUNY Graduate Center. He has taught at both the University of Tehran and UCLA for several years. Dr. Pourjavady’s scholarship includes editions of several musical treatises, numerous articles, encyclopedia entries, book reviews, and CDs. His previous projects have produced significant results, notably his acclaimed book Music-Making in Iran from the Fifteenth to the Early Twentieth Century (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), as well as his forthcoming publication Music in the Safavid Era (1501–1736) (Brill, 2026). In addition to his academic achievements, Dr. Pourjavady is an accomplished Persian setār player and has performed extensively with renowned Iranian musicians.
Sholeh Quinn (UC Merced) - Early Modern Iranian History
Sholeh Quinn is Professor of History at the University of California, Merced in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. Her research focuses on the history of early modern Iran and Persian historiography. She is the author of Historical Writing during the Reign of Shah ‘Abbas: Ideology, Imitation, and Legitimacy in Safavid Chronicles (2000), Shah Abbas: the King Who Refashioned Iran (2015). Her most recent book is Persian Historiography across Empire: the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Charles Melville (University of Cambridge) - Medieval Iranian History
Charles Melville holds a BA 1st-class Hons. in Oriental Studies (Arabic & Persian, University of Cambridge, 1972), MA in Islamic History (LSOAS, 1973) and PhD in Oriental Studies (University of Cambridge, 1978), on the History of Persian Earthquakes. He is Professor Emeritus of Persian History at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College. He has been a long-serving member of the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies and was its President 2017-23. He is Director of the Shahnama Project (since 1999) and was President of The Islamic Manuscript Association (2006–2019), both based in Cambridge. His main scholarly interests are in the history and historiography of medieval and early modern Iran and he has published extensively on the history and culture of Iran in the Mongol to Safavid periods (13th to 17th centuries), on the illustration of Persian manuscripts and on the epic Shahnama of Firdausi. Recent publications include several edited volumes, such as Persian Historiography, volume X of the History of Persian Literature (London, 2012); The Mongols’ Middle East. Continuity and transformation in Ilkhanid Iran (Leiden, 2016) [with Bruno de Nicola]; Shahnama Studies III (Leiden, 2018) [with Gabrielle van den Berg]; The contest for rule in eighteenth-century Iran. The Idea of Iran, volume XI (London: IB Tauris, 2022); and a chapter on ‘Persian Sources’ in the Cambridge History of the Mongol Empire (2023). He has just completed a Leverhulme Trust Emeritus Fellowship on the ‘Visualisation of Persian History’. Prof. Melville he has travelled widely in Iran (before and after the Islamic Revolution) and parts of Central Asia.
- Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi (University of Toronto)