Student Research
Highlights of undergraduate and graduate student research funded by the Iranian Studies Program
PhD student in ethnomusicology, Ashkan Nazari, traveled to Nashville, TN in the summer of 2024 to conduct research on the role of Kurdish music in shaping a new collective identity within the Nashville Kurdish diaspora. His project was supported by the Sarshar Research grant for the study of the Iranian diaspora.
"Kurdish music in Nashville serves as a vital cultural, social, and…
The biennial Association for Iranian Studies conference took place in Mexico City, Mexico in August 2024. Two Iranian studies minor students, Matin Mirramezani '24 and Sam Samani '26, attended with support from the Iranian Studies Program.
In the summer of 2023, Stanford PhD student in theater and performance studies, Karishma Bhagani, traveled to Ghana and South Africa to attend conferences and study the histories of producing and staging African bodies on the global stage. Karishma presented her paper "Zangi: The Performance of Blackness in Amir Khusrau’s Tale of the Camphor Princess" at the International Federation for…
In the summer of 2023, Stanford political science undergraduate Ethan Lee, BA '23, conducted research for his paper "Red Lines That Bind: International Law, Audience Costs, and Nuclear Counterproliferation in U.S. Foreign Policy," with support from the Iranian Studies Program, among other Stanford programs.
"Amid escalating U.S.-Iran tensions in January 2020, President…
The first student project awarded from the Sarshar Diaspora research grant. Undergraduate Roya Ahmadi, BS Human Biology '25, spent the summer of 2022 in New York City conducting research and working on several art projects.
"My experience completing an independent art project supported by the Iranian Studies Program in the summer of 2022 helped me self-identify as an artist and…
Religious studies undergraduate Hasan Tauha, BA '24, traveled to Indiana University during the summer of 2022 to study the Persian language, with support from the Iranian Studies Program.
In the summer of 2022, political science PhD student Feyaad Allie '23 traveled to India to conduct research for his dissertation "Power, Exclusion, and Identity: The Politics of the Muslim Disadvantage in India."
"I argue that a key contributor to the Muslim disadvantage in India is the crucial yet understudied heterogeneity within the Indian Muslim population. Muslim identity is…
Building on her certificate in Iranian Studies, PhD candidate Alexandria Brown-Hejazi used an Iranian Studies grant to assist her research, creation, and hosting of an exhibit with the David Rumsey Map Center titled "Mapping the Islamic World: The Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal Empires" in the spring of 2021.
About the exhibit:
"The early modern world witnessed…
Daniella Farah, a PhD candidate in Jewish history, conducted interviews and archival research in the summer of 2020 for her dissertation on the Jews of twentieth-century Iran, focusing on the themes of education, national belonging, and the press among Iran’s Jews from the mid-1940s to the early 1980s.
Cameron, a senior studying math and computer science and minoring in Iranian Studies, explored questions of assimilation, class, immigration, and family history amongst the Iranian diaspora of the Washington metro area in a project titled “The Way to the Bread.”