Spring 2025 Zahedi Fellow: Ehssan Hanif
Ehssan Hanif joins the Stanford Iranian Studies Program and the Hoover Institution Library and Archives as the Spring 2025 Zahedi Family Fellow.
Ehssan Hanif is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Architecture and Urban Development at Cornell University. His research, tentatively titled Petro-domesticity and Modernity in Iran (1929–1963), explores the intricate history of oil and architectural modernity within Iranian domestic spaces, mapping their manifestations from Abadan to Tehran. In his work, he examines how the interplay between oil workers’ movements, international interests in Iran’s subsoil resources, and nationalist discourses reshaped housing projects across Iranian cities. Prior to his time at Cornell, he worked as an independent researcher and translator in Iran, translating several seminal texts into Persian, including Architecture and Modernity (H. Heynen), Benjamin for Architects (B. Elliot), The Story of Post-modernism (C. Jenks), and Aesthetic Theory: Essential Texts (M.F. Gage). Ehssan’s latest scholarly contribution, “Cinemas on Fire: Walter Benjamin’s Spielraum and the 1979 Revolution in Iran,” is forthcoming in Middle East Critique.
During his fellowship at Stanford in the spring of 2025, he will examine the political economy of oil in the aftermath of the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran (1941), tracing its trajectory toward the formation of the 1954 Consortium. Through a critical analysis of workers’ publications, official correspondence, and conflicts among key stakeholders, his research seeks to illuminate the forces that shaped the Consortium’s emergence and its potential impacts on architectural modernity in Iran.
The Zahedi Family Fellowship is a 12-week residential fellowship with the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies and the Hoover Library and Archives at Stanford focused on the Ardeshir Zahedi Archives. Hanif will give a public lecture on his research at the end of his residency (details to come in spring quarter).