Events - 2019

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.

A discussion about items removed from Persepolis to foreign collections.

Dr Shafiee lectures at Warwick University. She  completed her PhD in the departments of History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. She was previously a post-doctoral research fellow at the National University of Singapore. As a visiting research fellow at the IAS, she has finalized the publication of her book manuscript, Machineries of Oil: An Infrastructural History of BP in Iran, forthcoming in 2017 with MIT Press. The book brings together histories of the Middle East with interdisciplinary thinking in science and technology studies to rethink the politics of the Middle East through a study of the British-controlled oil industry in Iran. She has published articles on the politics of petroleum formulas and labour in the history of Iran’s oil industry and has a forthcoming article on the transformative role of Anglo-Iranian oil in international law. Her new project at IAS is to write an infrastructural history of risk in the building of a large-scale dam in southwest Iran, along the Persian Gulf, while continuing to consider the centrality of technologies of energy development in shaping political disputes in the twentieth century. The lecture will be preceded by the Annual General Meeting at 6.15pm

Iran as a Woman’s Career: The Exceptional Case of Jane Dieulafoy (1851–1916) The life and work of Jane Dieulafoy, a writer, archaeologist and women’s activist who is largely forgotten today. I shall be focusing on three chapters of Dieulafoy’s career that were devoted to Iran: her debut as a travel writer (1881–1882); her participation in the first French archaeological mission at Susa (1884–1886); and her efforts to disseminate Achaemenid history to a wider audience by writing a novel and then staging it in collaboration with Camille Saint-Saëns (1890–1902). In these three stages of her career, Jane Dieulafoy was not only becoming one of the foremost experts on contemporary and ancient Iran of her time, but she was also carving a space for women outside the domestic sphere. I will argue that Dieulafoy’s sustained engagement with Iranian culture and history allowed her to challenge gender hierarchies in a far more complex and engaging manner than she was able to do in her more overt campaigns for women’s rights.  Julia Hartley _____________________________ Dr Hartley grew up in Brussels where she was raised in English and Italian by my parents and went to French-speaking schools. After taking her doctorate in Medieval & Modern French and Italian at Oxford she arrived at Warwick in 2018 as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, to work on French perceptions of Iran in the nineteenth century.. Research interests: Her main research focus at present is her Leverhulme project, entitled ‘West-Eastern Encounters: Iran in French Literature (1829-1908)’, which looks at the reception of Persian literature and the perception of Iran in French literature in the nineteenth century, including fiction, poetry, essays, travel writing, and drama. Publications: Sa’di at Large’, special issue of Iranian Studies journal. ‘Beyond Orientalism: When Desbordes-Valmore Carried Sa’di’s Roses to France’, Iranian Studies 52 (July 2019).

Edoardo Ferrari has been working in the desert region around Tabas, destroyed by earthquake in September 1978, to engage local master builders to rebuild or restore traditional mud brick houses, using the old methods while enough ostads remained alive to pass on the knowledge of their craft. The village of Esfahk has experienced a unique process of transformation throughout history. The village is situated in the barren desert land of South Khorasan, presenting varied examples of domestic architecture: from the more ancient houses carved under the ground, to the more complex mansions with domes around central courtyards. After the disastrous Tabas earthquake of 1978 the old settlement was left so that the community could move to a new village built beside the old one, which was left abandoned for thirty years. In the last six years a group of young villagers have autonomously begun to work at the restoration of some of the houses in the old settlement. From that time, several Iranian architects, local craftsmen, students and villagers have collaborated in an ongoing process of rediscovery and re-learning of local construction techniques. As part of his PhD project on the vernacular architecture of Central-Eastern Iran Edoardi Ferrari has travelled to the village several times in preparation for twelve months of fieldwork in Esfahk from next year. The initial trips were intended to prepare him before becoming an apprentice mason, working with the local community on some of the restoration projects which are currently running in the village. Next year it will be possible for him to start the documentation of local construction techniques working alongside masons while living in the old settlement to study its history. Edoardo Ferrari is in receipt of the British Institute of Persian Studies Grant 2019-2020 and The Traverse Trust / ISA Travel Award 2019.

Our Christmas dinner will be preceded by a reading of a scripted play about the murder in 1918 in the British Legation of the British Military Attaché, the subsequent trial and its political consequences. The script was compiled by the great-grandson of the Military Attaché and will be performed by him with two recent members of the Embassy staff. This is a ticketed event with limited seating, open to members who may bring up to 2 guests.  No admittance without a ticket. Tickets cost £37.50 each and can be purchased online via the following link: Tickets .  A password is required which has been sent to all members. Ticket sales close on 5th December.