Archive for April 18th, 2026

1.Iran: International Law and the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Times of War

The humanitarian toll and widespread disruption of life caused by the relentless bombing campaigns in the war on Iran since February 28, 2026, are tragic. Equally significant is the destruction of monuments of profound cultural importance to Iran and Iranians.

Join us for ‘Iran: International Law and the Protection of Cultural Heritage in Times of War’ presented by Courtauld Trans-Asias in partnership with the Iran Heritage Foundation.

📆 Tuesday, 12 May 2026

⏱️ 17:30 – 19:00

📍The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square Campus, Lecture Theatre 2, 

London WC1X 9EW

🔗 Free, booking essential please click here to register

This event brings together a panel of experts on Iranian heritage, from antiquities to modern times, and an expert in international law, to offer insights and discuss the destruction of monuments and the significance and future of World Heritage as a shared global concern.

🔹 Sussan Babaie, Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam, Courtauld Institute.

🔹 Dr John Curtis, FBA, Keeper Emeritus, Ancient Iran and Iraq, the British Museum, and former Chief Executive Officer of the Iran Heritage Foundation.

🔹 Dr Lindsay Allen, Lecturer in Greek & Near Eastern History, King’s College London.

🔹 Professor Roger O’Keefe, Professor of International Law, Department of Legal Studies, Bocconi University, Milan

🔹 Dr Peyvand Firouzeh, Islamic Art, University of Cambridge.

Organised by Sussan Babaie, Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam, as part of the Research Cluster Courtauld Trans-Asias, in collaboration with the Iran Heritage Foundation.

 

 

 

 

2. The Forensic Archive of Iran

A citizen-led investigative archive documenting crimes against Iran’s cultural heritage.
https://www.forensicarchiveofiran.com/

And open call for our interdisciplinary publication, the Forensic Archive Dossier:
https://www.forensicarchiveofiran.com/dossier

 

 

 

 

 

3. ONLINE Webinar: ‘Peering Through the Cracks. Polish Musicians in Tehran 1942 to 1945: The Case of Irena Valdi-Gołębiowska’

with Laudan Nooshin

British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS), 14 May, 2026,  5:00 pm UK Time
In the spring and summer of 1942, an estimated 300,000 Poles arrived in Iran, having travelled thousands of miles from recently opened-up Soviet labour camps in Siberia and elsewhere in Central Asia. Notwithstanding people’s sense of transience, a Polish cultural presence was established within a relatively short period, with schools, cultural institutions, radio stations, newspapers and cafés. And there were also musicians. This talk reports on a project exploring the cultural and musical lives of Polish exile-refugees in Iran during World War 2. I focus on the singer Irena Valdi-Gołębiowska (1891-1979) who lived in Tehran between 1942 and 1945 and whose collection of photographs, programme notes, concert invitations and letters becomes a lens through which to understand something of the geography of the Polish presence in Tehran at this time. More broadly, I examine how legacies of migrant stories are formed and narrated, and how we recover individual stories against narratives of collective migratory experiences (Image credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

Information and registration: 

https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2617763476100/WN_5Ea95C7fS6qPif1-8DjQjQ#/registration

 

 

 

 

 

4. Birds, Wings, and Diadems: Zoroastrian Symbols in Parthian and Sasanian Art
with Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
30 April 2026, 6PM GMT
Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS

 

 

 

 

5. Zoom: Alwaleed Centre, University of Edinburgh

Seminar: Secularism, Hegemony and the Paradoxes of State Recognition

Wednesday 29 April, 1pm to 2pm BST

Venue: Seminar room, 2 Hope Park Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9NW

Join Dr A. Sophie Lauwers (IASH-Alwaleed Postdoctoral Fellow, 2025-26) on 29 April at 1pm BST for a seminar on ‘Secularism, Hegemony and the Paradoxes of State Recognition’. The first half of the seminar examines patterns of secular and Christian hegemony, and how these can feed into the marginalisation of (often racialized) religious minorities. The second half looks at a possible solution often proposed in policy circles: extending state recognition to religious minorities. Can state-religion dialogue forums like the Islam Conference (in Germany), or state funding for Catholic, Protestant and Jewish schools (as in Flandres) deliver the equality and inclusion they promise, or do they (also) reinforce hegemonic norms?

 

 

 

 

 

6. The Uninvited Guest 

Histories of Persian Theatre in the Qajar Period
by
Duman Riyazi

ISBN: 978-1-997503-35-4

Iran’s performance traditions were vibrant and deeply rooted long before the Qajar monarchs travelled to Europe. Yet during their journeys, Naser al-Din Shah and Mozaffar al-Din Shah attended opera houses, theatres, concerts, and musical spectacles that became part of a complex cultural encounter whose full scope has remained largely unexplored.

The published royal diaries offer only brief references to these experiences. The broader record, however, lay scattered across European cities and archives.

For the first time, Duman Riyazi meticulously reconstructs and documents the Shahs’ European itineraries step by step, travelling city by city, following their routes, and uncovering forgotten documents that reconstruct what they truly witnessed. Through extensive archival research across Europe, this book brings to light a hidden dimension of Iran’s theatrical modernization, revealing a layered dialogue between traditions rather than a simple process of importing or adopting European models.

To purchase via Amazon:
https://a.co/d/0117KAR7

To purchase via Lulu:
https://www.lulu.com/shop/duman-riyazi/the-uninvited-guest-histories-of-persian-theatre-in-the-qajar-period/paperback/product-2mdjkkn.html?page=1&pageSize=4

To learn more:
https://asemanabooks.ca/uninvited-guest/

 

 

 

 

 

7. ONLINE Webinar “Historical-cultural Portrait of the Mamluk-Ottoman Transition” by Rachida Chin (CNRS), Orient-Institute Beirut & University of Bamberg & University of Göttingen, 22 April 2026, 18:00 – 19:30 CET

This presentation will focus on the historical context that allowed for the emergence of scholarly circles within which a rich historiographical culture developed, alongside an intense engagement with hadīth studies, large-scale works of synthesis, and the deep embedding of Sufism within learned culture. Fi-nally, we will examine the international circulation of this knowledge in the early modern period, marked by the growth of major Arab cities and the expansion of pilgrimage routes.

Information and registration: https://tinyurl.com/2h59v388

 

 

 

 

 

8. ONLINE Webinar “Race, Power, and Politics: Antisemitism and Islamophobia, Past and Present” by Sahar Aziz and Santiago Slabodsky, Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, University of Pennsylvania, 23 April 2026, 18:00 – 19:00 CET

This lecture takes a distinctive comparative approach, examining antisemitism and Islamophobia not as isolated phenomena but as entangled histories that reveal fundamental patterns in how societies construct and target minorities. By bringing these two forms of prejudice into conversation, we aim to uncover what their similarities and differences teach us about the architecture of discrimination itself – and how we might better dismantle it.

Information and registration: https://tinyurl.com/3aajja54

 

 

 

 

 

9. International Conference “In the Name of Sultan, Emperor, and King: Grand Viziers, Chief Ministers, and Structures of Delegated Power in Early Modern Eurasia”, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, 27-29 May 2026

How did sultans, emperors, and kings in early modern Eurasia delegate power to their grand viziers, chief ministers, chancellors, and other “second persons” in their courts? How did ideas about kinship and nobility, levels of social mobility, and religious, political, and intellectual debates shape – and re-shape – these systems?

Information, program and registration: https://tinyurl.com/3anu2nrx

 

 

 

 

 

10. ONLINE Interdisciplinary Webinar Series & Edited Volume “American Islam at 250: Commu-nity, Authority, and Futurity in the American Muslim Experience”, Florida International Univer-sity & East-West Foundation, July – December 2026

As the USA marks its 250th anniversary, the American Muslim community stands at a pivotal juncture. This webinar series convenes historians, political scientists, religious studies scholars, sociologists, anthropologists, legal scholars, theologians, and public intellectuals for a rigorous, eight-episode ex-amination of the American Muslim community as it is today and as it might become.

Deadline for abstracts: 1 May 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/4m54whdp

 

 

 

 

 

11. PhD Student Position (3 Years) in Arabic Philosophy and Its Hebrew and Latin Reception, University of Cologne

Candidates must hold a Master’s degree or an equivalent qualification in a relevant discipline. A high level of proficiency in Arabic or Hebrew or Latin is required, as is a strong command of English, which serves as the project’s primary language of publication. Knowledge of Greek is considered an ad-vantage but is not a prerequisite for application

Deadline for applications: 15 May 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/dp33cjzm

 

 

 

12. Summer School “Terms and Turns of Empire. Interconnecting Concepts and Methods (Fo-cus Ottoman Empire)” University of Freiburg, 7-12 September 2026

Organized by the research Graduate School “Empires. Dynamic Change, Temporality and Post-Impe-rial Orders”, this summer school offers an intensive interdisciplinary methodological forum for critical engagement with the relationship between methods and concepts of ‘empire’ across academic fields and historical periods.

Deadline for applications: 31 May 2026. Information: https://tinyurl.com/2zn54a6z

 

 

 

 

 

 

13. Contributions to New Book Series ” Islam, Science and Ethics of Emerging Technologies” Edited by Hureyre Kam, University of Innsbruck

This interdisciplinary series explores the dynamic engagement of Islamic intellectual traditions with contemporary science and emerging technologies. It brings classical and contemporary resources from kalām, ḥikma, fiqh, akhlāq, and taṣawwuf into critical dialogue with fields such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, neuroscience, digital religions, religious education in the digital age, environmental sci-ence, and transhumanist thought.

Information: https://tinyurl.com/839vxtdb

 

 

 

 

14. ONLINE Collection of Articles on “Anthropology of Iran” in the Special Issue of “Curated Collection”, 10 March 2026

This collection of 11 articles features authors who draw on their fieldwork and expertise to illuminate how individuals and communities navigate, resist, and reshape the forces impacting their lives. They engage with contemporary debates not only as scholars but as public intellectuals committed to ac-countability, justice, and praxis within and beyond the academy.

Download: https://tinyurl.com/mr437yu8

 

 

 

15. New Book: “The Forgotten Khayr al-Din al-Tunsi’s Islamic Social Contract: Governance, Pub-lic Welfare and Justice” by Deina Ali Abdelkader, Edinburgh University Press, April 2026, 200 Pages

This book challenges the entrenched marginalisation of Muslim contributions to political theory, expos-ing the epistemological biases that have privileged Western traditions while silencing rich intellectual legacies from the Islamic world. Centering on the 19th-century reformer Khayr al-Din al-Tunsi, it offers the first comprehensive analysis and translation of his political writings through the lens of Islamic ju-risprudence.

Information: https://tinyurl.com/yda7ckye

 

 

 

 

 

16. New Book: “Egyptian Male Film Stars in the Nasser Era: Envisioning a National Identity” by Samar Abdel-Rahman, AUC Press, 7 April 2026, 260 Pages

The author illuminates how the three key stars Omar Sharif, Ismail Yassin, and Farid Shawqi promoted a civic identity that aligned with the regime’s ambitions, and how each of them – through melodrama, comedy, and action – negotiated a different facet of masculine identity that spoke to the ambivalent constructions of hegemonic masculinity during this critical post-colonial period.

Information: https://tinyurl.com/5n7h5865

 

 

 

17. New Book: “Post-Ottoman Transitions – Rethinking Nation-State Trajectories in the Arab and Turkish Contexts” Edited by Soumaya Louhichi & Jamal Barout, Ergon, April 2026, 233 Pages

This volume examines post-imperial state formation in former Ottoman provinces, shifting the focus from a presumed rupture after 1918 to the enduring administrative, legal, and political continuities of the Ottoman Empire. Through case studies – drawing on examples such as Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Turkey – it analyzes border disputes, foreign policy strategies, and competing visions of regional order in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Information: https://tinyurl.com/yc8dpdbr