Upcoming Events

This event will be held at St Columba's Church, Pont Street,  followed by the Christmas dinner.  Admission to members and their guests only. Tickets cost £35 each and can be bought by clicking on the link below. During the 1970s, whilst carrying out reconnaissance work for two university archaeological expeditions in southern Iran, Brian travelled extensively throughout that country as well as in Afghanistan and Turkey. In 1972, he lived and worked amongst two tribal groups in Iran – the…

Aeron O'Connor is an anthropologist based at UCL, where she is completing her PhD. Her research focuses on the intellectual history of modern-day Tajikistan. She has lived and carried out ethnographic research in Dushanbe, Tajikistan for two years, working in Tajik Persian. There, she worked extensively with artists, musicians, writers and scholars. Her research ultimately reflects on how ideas and artistic and literary movements have been produced, shared and transformed during Tajikistan's fast-changing history in and out of communism.

Lucy Deacon was one of the performers at the Burns-Hafez event last December.  She has attended a number of performances of ta'zieh in Iran and has also studied a collection of ta'zieh scripts held in the Vatican library.

Anahita Alavi is an Iranian artist who has learned Persian Miniature, Islamic Illumination and Geometric design under the supervision of the great masters in Iran.  She has taught Persian painting and Islamic illumination at the Payam-e Noor University of Tehran and a number of schools and institutes in Iran.  Since 2016, she has been engaged in teaching and producing Persian painting and illumination at SOAS. In this talk she will go through the process of preparing the materials and production…

A discussion about items removed from Persepolis to foreign collections.