Editorial

Simin Amini is a doctoral student and an Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Graduate Fellow in Ancient Iranian Studies at Art History/Visual Studies at UCI. Amini earned her MA from University of London’s SOAS, where she wrote her thesis on ancient Iranian apotropaic amulets and Zoroastrian demonology. Simin has worked at the British Museum on their collections of related material amulets and metalwork. Her research is an extensive investigation on the magical practice and visuality and materiality of evil in the ancient Iranian world.

Philip Grant is a Persian-English translator, anthropologist and historian. His publications include a translation of Javad Tabatabai’s Ibn Khaldun and the Social Sciences: Discourse on the Conditions of Im-possibility (Polity, 2024); a co-authored sociological investigation of investment management, Chains of Finance (Oxford, 2017) that emerged from his postdoctoral position in the Social Studies of Finance at the University of Edinburgh; and articles on the Zanj Rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate in Iraq and Iran (ninth century CE). His 2012 PhD dissertation in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Irvine, explored the epistemology and ethics of ethnographic collaboration with Iranian-American women’s activists. He has also worked as a philosophical consultant to technology companies and an equity fund manager. He currently teaches anthropology (biological, cultural, and linguistic) at the University of La Verne, California, and is an Associate Scholar of the Center for Persian Studies at UC Irvine.

Melissa DePierro is a Ph.D. student in Visual Studies at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies under Dr. Matthew Canepa. She is the recipient of the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Doctoral Fellowship in Ancient Iranian Art History and Archaeology. Currently, she serves as the student representative for the Department of Visual Studies. Her research examines the roles of animals in antiquity, with a focus on their presence and agency in military, domestic, elite, religious, and scientific contexts across the ancient Mediterranean and Near East. Her work highlights how animals shaped ancient worldviews, social life, and built environments, from war elephants and mythological hybrids to household animals. Through an interdisciplinary approach, her research challenges anthropocentric narratives and repositions animals as central actors in the ancient world.

Melissa holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of Georgia, where she completed her thesis “Business, Leisure, and Piety: Animal Motifs in the Floor Mosaics at the Villa of Piazza Armerina,” and a B.A. in Art History and classical archaeology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has participated in excavations in Israel and Kurdistan. She has held research and teaching roles at the Getty Research Institute, UC Irvine, the University of Georgia, the Georgia Museum of Art, and the North Carolina Museum of Art.

Amirali Ardekanian is a doctoral student and Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Doctoral Fellow in Art History and Archaeology of Ancient Iran in the Visual Studies program at the University of California, Irvine, where he also earned his M.A. in Visual Studies. Drawn from archival and visual sources, his research examines the reception of the ancient world in 19th- and early 20th-century Iran, focusing on how photography, national identity, museology, and cultural history intersected in shaping modern Iranian visual culture.

His broader interests include the history of photography and picture postcards, vernacular art and architecture of Qajar Iran, and the cultural significance of Iran’s early music recording industry.

He has presented his research internationally, including at the Getty Research Institute, the University of Strasbourg, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and has delivered invited lectures for the Ghubār Circle for Islamic Art Studies and the Nimruz Institute for Iranian Studies. His curatorial and archival experience includes managing the archives of the Samuel M. Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture at UC Irvine and working with the Music Museum of Tehran.

In addition to his scholarly work, he has published extensively in Persian on Iranian music history and visual culture in journals such as Māhoor, Hāfez-Pazhuhi, and Farāhang. He is also co-author of forthcoming books, including Tehran: In the Road of Modernism and The Tasnifs of the Early Pahlavi Period.

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, 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

Habib Borjian is a philologist specializing in historical linguistics, dialectology, Persian mythology, and the history of Inner Asia. His academic training in the humanities spans Columbia University, the University of Tehran, and Yerevan State University.

Dr. Borjian is currently a visiting scholar at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.  He was a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center for Iranian Studies from 2010 to 2019, during which he served on the editorial board of the Encyclopaedia Iranica. He is a member of the board of directors of the Endangered Language Alliance, dedicated to documenting rare languages spoken by immigrant communities in Greater New York. Additionally, he has served as Co-Director for the Near East region at the Endangered Languages Project, a joint initiative of Google and the University of Hawai‘i, where his work involved identifying and categorizing the languages of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, and Iran.

His scholarly output includes a dozen books, numerous papers in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, and over a hundred encyclopedia entries. He has documented and published on nearly all Iranian language families, including Central Plateau, Caspian, Gorgāni, Semnāni, Tatic, Caucasian Tat, Kurdish, Lori, the Fars group, Lārestāni, the Southeastern group, Balochi, Pamiri, Ossetic, and Tajik dialects. His research has introduced new terminology, including Garmsiri, Biabanaki, Komisenian, Tabaroid and Perso-Tabaric, which have gained recognition in the field.

Laetitia Nanquette is Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney. She holds a PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She was trained in France (Sorbonne University, INALCO), the United Kingdom (SOAS), Iran (Universities of Tehran and Isfahan) and the United States (Fulbright visiting scholar at Harvard University), before moving to Australia. She is the author of the award-winning books Orientalism versus Occidentalism: Literary and Cultural Imaging Between France and Iran since the Islamic Revolution (I.B. Tauris/Bloomsbury 2013), and Iranian Literature after the Islamic Revolution. Production and Circulation in Iran and the World (Edinburgh University Press, 2021). She is Associate Editor (Modern Persian Literature) for Iranian studies and for Abstracta Iranica. She works on modern and contemporary Persian literature and is currently writing a book on the history of publishing in Iran from the 1950s until today. She lives with her family in Sydney.

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 S. Diba is an independent art advisor, scholar and curator specializing in the art of 19^th and 20^th 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 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 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 holds a BA 1^st-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, the Inaugural Director of the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies, is Professor of Historical Studies, History, and Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. He was the founding Chair of the Department of Historical Studies at the University of Toronto- Mississauga (2004-07) and has served as President of the International Society for Iranian Studies (2008-10). In addition to serving as Editor-in-Chief of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2001-2012), a Duke University Press journal, he was the Editor of Iran Nameh (2011-2015). Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of Iran Namag, Cinema Iranica, Women Poets Iranica, and the co-editor of the Iranian Studies book series published by Routledge. Tavakoli is the author of Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography
(Palgrave, 2001) and Tajaddud-i Bumi [Vernacular Modernity] (Nashr-i Tarikh, 2003). Together with providing critical introductions in Persian, he has edited the volumes Civilizational Wisdom: Selected Works of Ehsan Yarshater (Toronto: Iran Namaeh Books, 2015); Jahangir Amuzgar: Selected Economic Essays (Toronto: Iran Nameh Books, 2015); and Ayin-i Danishjuyan: The First University of Tehran Student Journal (Toronto: Iran Nameh Books, 2016). Tavakoli has published numerous historiographical articles in English and Persian on Iranian modernity, matriarchal nationalism, biopolitics, rights governmentality, and clerico engineering. Tavakoli is the recipient of two Outstanding Teacher awards from Illinois State University (1996 and 2001) and has held visiting fellowships at St. Antony’s College, Oxford University (1998), the Center for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, 1992–93); and Harvard University (1991–92). He holds a BA in Political Science, an MA in History from the University of Iowa, and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago.