Fourth Biennial Symposia Iranica

Hosted by the Institute of Iranian Studies at St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews, on 12-14 April 2019.

Symposia Iranica is the premier international forum for early career scholars working in Iranian studies. Ranking amongst the largest conferences in Middle Eastern studies worldwide, it has gathered a global community of over 400 from more than 1,500 applicants since its inception in 2012. In a bold testament to the global reach and vitality of emergent scholarship in Iranian Studies, we were proud to host as many as 120 postgraduate and post-doctoral speakers from no fewer than 24 countries in our second largest conference to date.

With the support of the Honeyman Foundation, we were thrilled to hold our first ever keynote with Professor Ramin Jahanbegloo for this event. It was followed by an opening reception dedicated to the memory of Dr Leonard Lewisohn and Dr Michael Axworthy, whose absence are felt keenly across the field as they were also at this conference. On Saturday, there were two optional events taking place: an introduction to the British Institute of Persian Studies in the Senate Room and a display of the University’s Persian manuscripts. We were doubly pleased to dedicate the conference to two legendary independent scholars and philanthropists, Mrs Fatema Soudavar Farmanfarmaian and Dr Abolala Soudavar.

And lastly, we were delighted to be back in St Andrews, now our institutional home as well as conference host after two phenomenal conferences at the University of Cambridge.