Dr. Melanie Gibson is Executive Trustee of the Gingko Library and Editor of the Gingko Library Art Series. She is a convenor of the Postgraduate Diploma in Asian Art at SOAS, London University. She lectures on Islamic ceramics and glass, as well as more widely on Islamic art and architecture, for SOAS, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Courtauld Institute. From 2012-2016 she was head of the Art History department at the New College of the Humanities, London. Her research focuses on the ceramics and glass of the Islamic world and she is also interested in plaster, ceramic and metal sculpture from the region. Her PhD dissertation studied the phenomenon of ceramic sculpture in Iran and Syria in the 12th and 13th centuries and she has also published articles on plaster and metalwork sculpture.

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 Afshar of Kerman Province and the Qashqa’i of Fars – making him one of the very few world carpet dealers who have actually spent time in the field. From 1973 onwards, he worked in Kerman in southern Iran until just before the Iranian Revolution. Brian has returned to Iran on several occasions in the 1990s onwards, travelling and collecting rugs and dowry bags amongst the Bakhtiari, Qashqa’i and Shahsevan tribes. Since the 1980s, he has been dealing in the most exquisite 19^th century tribal weavings, based in the Cotswolds, where he still acts as a dealer, lecturer and consultant today. Brian’s book Tribal Rugs – Treasures of the Black Tent was first published in October 1997 and received a warm reception from collectors, dealers and enthusiasts worldwide. Ghereh International Carpet & Textle Review (Spring 1998) described it as “one of the finest books written on tribal rugs”. Tribal Rugs – Treasures of the Black Tent is now in its 3^rd up-dated re-print and is now available. TICKETS:  https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/christmas-lecture-tickets-50232368366

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).

Niloufar Raeesi Chahartaghi studied zoology at Shahid Beheshti University, with a particular interest in conservation. At the age of 20 she started working as a volunteer in the Golestan National Park. She is currently studying for an MSc in conservation science at Imperial College, London, with a view to returning to Iran to work with a group of young conservationists to maintain the national heritage. She will be showing slides and film of her work in a number of Iran’s wildlife parks.

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.