1 ELECTIONS: Thanks for making our Seventh OFFICE OF SECRETARY ! CANDIDATE’S BIOS ! ! CANDIDATE ! OFFICE OF VICE-PRESIDENT Ghazzal Dabiri holds a Ph.D. in Iranian Studies ! in the Department of CANDIDATE Near Eastern Languages ! a n d C u l t u r e s f r o m Rudi Matthee received UCLA. She is currently a his Ph.D. in Islamic post-doctoral fellow at S t u d i e s f r o m t h e Ghent University and has University of California, taught at Columbia Los Angles. Since 1993 University, where she was also Persian Studies he has been teaching at program coordinator, UCLA, and CSUF. Her the University of research focuses on the development of and Delaware, where he is cross-sections between Iranian historiography Distinguished Professor of Middle Eastern and Persian epics as well as on the social History. Matthee has published widely on history of early Islamic Iran. Based on this, she Safavid and Qajar Iran as well as Egypt. He has published the following articles: “Visions authored The Politics of Trade in Safavid of Heaven and Hell from Late Antiquity in the Iran: Silk for Silver, 1600-1730 (1999), Near East” (2009); “The Shahnama: Between recipient of the prize for best non-Persian the Samanids and Ghaznavids” (2010), and language book on Iranian history awarded by “Historiography and the Sho’ubiya Movement” the Iranian Ministry of Culture; honorable (2013). mention for British-Kuwaiti Friendship Prize; The Pursuit of Pleasure: Drugs and ! Other publications include: “The Mother Stimulants in Iranian History, 1500-1900 Tongue: An Introduction to the Persian (2005), recipient of the Albert Hourani Book Language.” PBS Frontline: Tehran Bureau Prize and the Saidi Sirjani Prize; Persia in and ;“Shiraz Nights.” PBS Frontline: Tehran Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isfahan Bureau, August 10, 2009. She is currently (2012), recipient of the British-Kuwaiti working on a book project entitled “Kings as Friendship Prize and the Jayezeh-ye jahani-ye Moral and Heroic Types in Early Islamic ketab awarded by the Iranian Ministry of Historiography and Persian Epics,” which was Culture; and, with Willem Floor and Patrick the subject of her dissertation, “The Origins Clawson, The Monetary History of Iran, and Development of Persian Epics” which 1500-1925 (2013), recipient of the Houchang won Honorable Mention for Best Dissertation Pourshariati Iranian Studies Book Award. He from the Foundation for Iranian Studies in also coedited three volumes. He is the former 2007. She was a recipient of a Fulbright president (2002-05 and 2008-11) of ASPS; Research Grant for the 2011-2012 academic served as book review editor for Iranian year. She has served ASPS as Newsletter Editor Studies; is coeditor of Der Islam, and a (2009-2015), Biennial Conference Organizing consulting editor for the Encyclopaedia Committee Member (2013/2015), and Iranica. In 2002-03 he was a fellow at the currently sits on the Board of Directors. !Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. ! 2 OFFICE OF TREASURER Arthur Dudney joined the ! Faculty of Asian and CANDIDATES Middle Eastern Studies, ! University of Cambridge as Daniel Beben a Leverhulme Early Career received his PhD in Fellow last September. His History and Central current project, “Making Persianate People: Histories Eurasian Studies from of Literary Education Indiana University in Beyond Iran,” considers how literary Persian 2015. He is currently was spread and maintained in the vast region an Assistant Professor where it had cultural currency but was not a of History at mother tongue. Previously he was at the Nazarbayev University, Republic of University of Oxford as a Mellon Postdoctoral Kazakhstan. His research and teaching focuses Fellow, where he researched Persian on the history of Central Asia and the dictionaries and philological works as sources Persianate world, with a particular focus on the for intellectual and social history in pre- history of religious communities. He has won colonial Persianate India. He received his PhD a number of grants and awards, including from the Department of Middle Eastern, dissertation research fellowships from the South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) at Columbia University in 2013. He conducted Social Science Research Council (SSRC), field research at Indian archives with the American Councils (ACTR) and IREX. Daniel support of a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral served for three years as President of the Dissertation Research Abroad grant. Association of Central Eurasian Students and ! as the chair of the annual Conference on His dissertation, to be published by Oxford Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University, University Press, is “A Desire for Meaning: for which he was responsible for coordinating Ḳhān-i Ārzū’s Philology and the Place of India fundraising efforts from multiple sources. He in the Eighteenth-Century Persianate World.” has been a member of ASPS since 2011. In May of this year, he organized the Symposium on Literature and History in ! Persianate South Asia at Oxford with funding from Oxford University, the British Institute ! for Persian Studies, and the Iran Heritage ! Fund. As a student he organized Columbia’s first annual Interdisciplinary Graduate ! Conference on the Middle East, South Asia and Africa (April 2010) and convened the ! department’s graduate students’ forum. He ! recently published *Delhi: Pages from a Forgotten History*, a mass-market history of ! Persianate Culture in South Asia (Hay House Books, New Delhi). He is a member of the ! editorial board for *The Shiʿah Heritage of ! South Asia* series. ! 3 BOARD OF DIRECTORS history of Modern Iran and the Persianate World as well as the interface between CANDIDATES historiography, politics and cultural memory ! in contemporary Iran. He has spent nearly ! three years of his academic career living, Sussan Babaie joined studying and working in Iran. He was the The Courtauld Institute head of Manchester’s department of Middle of Art in 2013 to take up Eastern Studies between September 2008 and a newly established post September 2011. Bast spent the Academic teaching on the arts of Year 2011-2012 at Yale University as a Visiting Iran and Islam. Born in Fellow in Iranian Studies at Yale’s Whitney Iran, she attended the and Betty MacMillan Center for International University of Tehran's and Area Studies. Faculty of Fine Arts Before joining the University of Manchester as (Graphic Design) until the revolution of 1979 a lecturer [Assistant Professor] in January 2000, when she moved to the USA where she Bast read History and Persian Studies in Berlin received her Master’s degree in Italian (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), in Tehran Renaissance and American Arts, and her PhD (University of Tehran), in Paris (Université de at the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU, with a la Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3) and in focus on the arts of Islam. She has taught at Bamberg (Otto-Friedrich-Universität Smith College and the University of Michigan Bamberg). in America, and as the Allianz Visiting Bast holds a joint doctorate (thèse en co-tutelle) in Professor at Ludwig Maximilian University in Oriental Studies (specialisation: History) from Munich. Her publications include Persian the Sorbonne Nouvelle and Bamberg where he kingship and architecture: Strategies of power pursued his doctoral studies under the joint in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis supervision of Professors Bert G. Fragner and (2015), Shirin Neshat (2013), and Slaves of Yann Richard. In October 2012 he set up the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran (2004). (together with Dr Siavush Randjbar-Daemi) She is the author of the award-winning the Manchester Iranian History Academic Isfahan and its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and Network (http://www.mihan.org.uk) at the the Architecture of Conviviality in Early University of Manchester. Since 2004, Bast has Modern Iran (2008). been serving on the Council of the British ! Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) ! and in July 2009 organised the 2009 Annual ! Conference of BRISMES at the University of Oliver Bast, Maître-ès- Manchester. In 2014 he was elected Executive Lettres, Dr. phil., is Director of BRISMES. In January 2009, he co- Senior Lecturer organised (with Dr Dominic Brookshaw) the [Associate Professor] in 10th Workshop of the British Institute of Middle Eastern History Persian Studies (BIPS), a British Academy- and Persian at the based learned society on whose Governing University of Council he has been serving as Honorary Manchester. Bast is a Secretary since 2013. In June 2006, Bast was historian of Modern co-organiser together with Professor Iran and his research Manoutchehr Eskandari-Qajar, of the 6th interests include the diplomatic and political Conference of the International Qajar Studies HTTP://WWW.PERSIANATESOCIETIES.ORG 4 Association (IQSA) in Paris acting on behalf On the Wonders of Land and Sea: Persianate of the Unité mixte de recherché Mondes popular Travel Writing (2013). He has written Iranien et Indien of the Centre National de la numerous scholarly pieces and co-curated Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), to which Bast is several exhibitions at Harvard University. His attached as a chercheur associé. Between 1995 research interests are in the areas of Persianate and 1997, Bast worked as an allocataire de literary and visual cultures, translation, and recherche at the Institut Français de Recherche en travel writing. He has served as board member Iran (IFRI) in Tehran, where in March 1997, of ASPS previously and is currently on the he organised an international conference on editorial board of JPS. Iran and World War I, which was held as a ! joint venture of IFRI and the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Political and ! !International Studies (IPIS). Rose Wellman is ! currently a ! p o s t d o c t o r a l Sunil Sharma is Professor researcher at the o f P e r s i a n a t e & Sharmin and Bijan Comparative Literature at Mossavar-Rahmani Boston University, where Center for Iran and he previously served as Persian Gulf Studies at Princeton University chair of the Department who specializes in Iran and Persianate Societies of Modern Languages & in the Middle East and Central Asia.