Supporting academic excellence and research in Persian and Iranian studies through scholarships, fellowships, and bursaries.
Arash Zeini was awarded a scholarship for his first year at SOAS as a PhD student in 2008-09. His thesis, entitled The Pahlavi Version of the Yasna Haptanghāiti, was completed in 2013 and supervised by Professor Almut Hintze, the Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism.
Read MoreShahrokh Razmjou was awarded a scholarship for two years of his PhD from 2007-08, which he had begun at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and completed at Birkbeck College, University of London supervised by Dr John Curtis, Director of the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum. Dr Razmjou’s thesis, Ritual Practices at Persepolis, was awarded the Foundation of Iranian Studies’ Dissertation Prize in 2008. Razmjou was previously Director of the Centre for Achaemenid Studies at the National Museum of Iran, a Clore Leadership Fellow in 2007, appointed curator of Ancient Iran in the Department of the Middle East at the British Museum (2009-2012), and is currently teaching at the Department of Archaeology, University of...
Read MoreMehrbod Khanizadeh was awarded a contribution towards his PhD at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His thesis, The Pahlavi Version of Yasna 9.1-15 was supervised by Professor Almut Hintze, the Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism.
Read MoreDr Yousef Moradi was awarded in 2021 a six-month postdoctoral fellowship to work on his ongoing study of 2000 Sassanian bullae and seal impressions at the SOAS, University of London. The SMF contribution completed the 2019-21 Marie Curie Fellowship awarded and granted while pending another fellowship by the European Research Council to Dr Morady to work with Professor Almut Hintze at SOAS on the publication of the bullae. In this period, he gave a lecture Ancient Iran and Indi Trust (AIIT).
Read MoreNarges Nematollahi was awarded a scholarship for her PhD started at SOAS under the supervision of Almut Hintze, Zartoshty Brothers Professor of Zoroastrianism. Her research project, entitled ‘The Avesta and Pahlavi Versions of the Hymns to Sraosha’ is aimed at creating a critical text edition based on the manuscripts of the Avesta and Pahlavi versions of Yasna 56, 57 and Yasht 11, with commentary, translation and dictionary. Narges is now at the University of Indiana Bloomington, where she was invited to continue her PhD.
Read MoreSaloumeh Gholami was awarded a scholarship for a PhD in Iranian Studies at the Goethe-Universitaet in Frankfurt from 2010-12 for a thesis on the position of Bactrian among Indo-Iranian languages; entitled Selected Features of Bactrian Grammar, It was published in 2014 by Harassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, within the series Göttinger Orientforschungen IRANICA. In 2013, Dr Gholami was appointed a Lecturer at the Institute of Comparative Linguistics, Goethe University, Germany. She is currently organizing jointly with Prof. Pollet Samvelian an international conference on “Endangered Iranian Languages” as follows: The International Symposium on Endangered Iranian Languages (ISEIL) proudly announces the second symposium to be held at the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, from 8 to 9 July 2016, as part of a...
Read MoreShervin Farridnejad was awarded a scholarship for a PhD at the University of Göttingen from 2008-13. His thesis, The Language of Images: A Study on Iconographic Exegesis of the Anthropomorphic Divine Images in Zoroastrianism (Eine ikonographisch/ikonologische Studie zu zoroastrischen Aspekten der sasanidischen Kunst) was supervised by Professor Philip G. Kreyenbroek, Professor and Director of Iranian Studies. In 2014, Dr Farridnejad was appointed as a Lecturer of Iranian Studies at the University of Göttingen, Germany.
Read MoreJaimee Comstock-Skipp was awarded a partial scholarship towards her Masters degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, starting autumn 2014. She completed a second MA program in spring 2015 in a special program on Mongol through Safavid Persian book arts under Sussan Babaie. She received highest marks, obtaining a ‘Distinction’ on her MA dissertation entitled, Heroes of Legend, Heroes of History: Militant Manuscripts of the Shaybanid Uzbeks in Transoxiana. This June, with funds from the British Institute of Persian Studies, she spent the entire month in Iran touring the region and its museums and monuments. In August, Jaimee departed for Tajikistan to carry out research funded by the Fulbright Program. This will be her fifth...
Read MoreA partial scholarship was awarded to Bahram Assadian, for work on his PhD in the Department of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. His thesis, entitled Displacing Numbers: On the Metaphysics of Mathematical Structuralism, investigates the nature and identity of numbers and other mathematical objects while also resuscitating Persian and especially Avicenna’s ‘discoveries on the logic of necessity’. Thus the central aim of Bahram Assadian’s doctoral thesis is “to scrutinise some of the most philosophically interesting challenges that emerge out of this conception of natural numbers.” “Is mathematics about distinctively mathematical entities such as the natural numbers, or is it about the ‘structures’ or ‘forms’ of such entities? This project has been centred on what is known as mathematical structuralism...
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