Upcoming event! On April 16th at 5pm, we will have a talk by Fatema Soudavar Farmanfarmaian about her book Scent, Colour and Glitter in the Ancient World. www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ifi/veran... #History #AncientHistory #IranianStudies #AncientWorld

Next forthcoming event! We will be hosting the conference "Iran under Reza Shah: Politics, Culture and State Building in the Early Pahlavi Period (1925-1941)": www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/veransta... #Iran #IranianStudies #History

Congratulations to our director Prof. Florian Schwarz, who has been elected as a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences! Full ÖAW membership is one of Austria's highest academic distinctions: we are excited by this recognition of Florian's own work and his wider role in shaping our field

This Nowruz comes when many of us and our colleagues are living with great fear, uncertainty, and grief. We send best wishes at this time to friends in our shared endeavour of understanding the Iranian world, and all across the wider region, who are in danger, or afraid for friends and loved ones.

Mongols from the West, co-edited by our Dr. Bruno de Nicola, has now been published in Spanish as Mongoles en el Oeste! Mongoles en el Oeste explora el papel de los reinos ibéricos en la integración euroasiática impulsada por el Imperio mongol en los siglos XIII y XIV: brill.com/display/titl...

Upcoming book talk! Dr. Nilab Saeedi will present her work on Muṣliḥ al-Dīn Lārī, especially his universal chronicle, Mirʾātu’l-Advār wa Mirḳātu’l-Aḫbār (The Mirror of Epochs and the Staircase of Historical Reports). Find out more: www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ifi/veran... #Persian #Ottoman #Iran #History

How did the Sasanian Empire really fall? Last month, the Sképsislamica podcast sat down with the IFI's @sasanianshah.bsky.social to find out, looking at the period's framing, Sasanian sources, religion, and how modern discourses shape scholarship on the Empire: www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTuk...

Upcoming conference! European imperial expansion has long been a focal point for historians, but only more recently that have scholars begun to systematically question colonial knowledge production and rethink bureaucracy as an instrument of governance: #History #Archives #Knowledge #Imperialism

Coming up this evening!

Lecture coming up TODAY in just under three hours! This is organised by the Persian Manuscripts Association, who from March will be joining with our NoMansLand Webinar Series to co-organise a series of online lectures for the rest of 2026. Register to join at: us06web.zoom.us/meeting/regi...

Starting very soon with our Friday evening workshop session! Looking forward to an exciting weekend with everyone :)

A recent interview with the IFI's Dr. Robert Steele regarding the protests in #Iran - do have a read (in German): www.oeaw.ac.at/news/protest... #IranProtests #IranianStudies

On February 19, at CEU, our Dr. Polina Ivanova will be giving a talk on how we write the histories of the absences of destroyed heritage, looking at the Ottoman history of Amasya. It will be in hybrid format - do join us for it! events.ceu.edu/2026-02-19/w... #Armenia #Turkey #History #Ottoman

The IFI's @sasanianshah.bsky.social contributed to this segment on the recent Iran protests - have a listen and stay informed on the situation: oe1.orf.at/player/20260... (In German) #Iran #IranianStudies

Our Caucasus research group is having another meetup - Caucasus and Caucasus-adjacent scholars across all Vienna institutions are very welcome! Details below:

Event tomorrow on Prepositional Compounds in Avestan and Old Persian - this is an in-person guest lecture, if you're in Vienna tomorrow morning then please do come and join us! www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/veransta...

New post on our blog! The term ságaris (σάγαρις) is used in classical sources for a specific weapon type attributed to the Scythians. But what was this weapon, and why this word? In the latest Tigris to Talas blogpost Hanna Vertiienko goes in search of answers: www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ifi/blog/...

Forthcoming: a Chagatai Manuscript Reading Course! Jeanine Dagyeli is leading this effort along with Philip Bockholt from the University of Munster. It is aimed at building scholars up to an advanced level for reading Chagatai manuscripts. Details below: #CentralAsia #Chagatai #Manuscripts

Our next hybrid lecture is "Sufi Teaching in the Margins: Ritual, Pedagogy, and Intertextuality in a Kubrawi Manuscript from 15th C. Badakhshan" by Bruno de Nicola! The lecture is tomorrow, 17:00-18:30 Central European Time: more details at www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/veransta...

Forthcoming event! We're soon hosting the Second European Round Table on Modern Persian Literature, co-organised by the University of New South Wales and with generous support from the Soudavar Memorial Foundation, Geneva. #Iran #Literature #Persian #PersianLiterature #IranianStudies

Tomorrow (Dec 17) at 5pm Central European Time, please join us for a talk on Armenian manuscript-making in the Ottoman Empire, another of our webinars on premodern manuscripts from the Islamic world!

This Friday we will be having a talk by Fabian Sarga of the Fre University of Berlin, who will be talking about how qanat irrigation systems shaped the landscape - and how the landscape shaped them - in Iran!

Our @sasanianshah.bsky.social will be doing some invited lectures at the University of Lille in the coming weeks! The topic is "The Orient’s East: Iran and Eurasia in the First Millennium CE" and three of the lectures will be available online with registration here: framaforms.org/the-orients-...

Our next @nomaland.bsky.social lecture will be tomorrow on the topic of Preaching, Books, and Community in Ottoman Hungary, by Prof. Tijana Krstić! Details available here: www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/veransta...

Our Caucasus research group is organising an October meetup! If you're based around Vienna and working on Caucasus studies of some kind, we'd love to see you there :)

Lecture by Dr. Sacha Alsancakli on "The Ottoman reception of the Nuzhat al-Qulūb (c.1340)" at the @nomaland.bsky.social Webinar. Watch it here: youtube.com/watch?v=MOqk... @oeaw.bsky.social @fwf-at.bsky.social @iranianstudies.bsky.social @translapt.bsky.social @sachaalsancakli.bsky.social

New faces at the IFI for the new academic year! Ilona Chmilevskia joins us as a pre-doctoral researcher working with Shamil Shikhaliev to study the transformation of Islamic juridical systems in the eastern Caucasus under the Russian Empire. Welcome to Ilona!

We have an open position for a pre-doctoral researcher in Dr. Ariane Sadjed's "Persian Jews – History, Community, Memory" team, looking at the Jewish communities of central Asia. See here for job profile and other details: applications must be in by October 1st. www.oeaw.ac.at/jobs?jh=pp87...

Event coming up in October! Our next JESHO workshop, convened by Dr. Paolo Sartori and with a keynote by Prof. Cemal Kafadar, is "Was There an Ottoman Decline?" Details here: www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/veransta... #Turkey #Ottoman #History #Asia #Economics

In August we were at the biannual Conference of the Association of Persianate Studies in Tashkent, Uzbekistan! Thanks to the hosts and organisers: these vital spaces show the importance of having many and diverse disciplines and scholars building better research on the Persianate world together!

Nuevas investigaciones sobre #Mongoles en el #Oeste enteramente en #espanol editado por Antonio García Espada (@uneduniv.bsky.social) y Bruno De Nicola (@oeaw.bsky.social‬). Disponible en noviembre 2025! Más información: brill.com/display/titl... @iranianstudies.bsky.social @fwf-at.bsky.social

Iran is facing severe drought. With high temperatures due to climate change, and tensions around water use and river flow, there are a range of potential risks ahead. An OEAW interview on the subject with our director, Prof. Florian Schwarz (in German): www.oeaw.ac.at/news/hitzewe...

In the recent Iran-Israel conflict, being informed on wider and long-term contexts can help with understanding the region. The IFI's Robert Steele has been informing the public on the history of these tensions: read (in German) his interview in Der Standard here: www.derstandard.at/story/300000...

Lots of great work on the wider Iranian world at last week's International Medieval Congress (@imc-leeds.bsky.social). From the IFI, we had Stefan Kamola on astrology & legitimacy in Mongol contexts, and @jubalbarca.bsky.social on masculinities in the medieval Caucasus. An exciting week all round!

New publication - a special issue of Medieval Worlds on knowledge transfer in Mongol Baghdad, with contributions from three of our researchers (Bruno De Nicola, Stefan Kamola, and Ghasem Gharib) is now out! Find out more here: doi.org/10.1553/medi...

Friends in Vienna, our Caucasus researchers are holding an interdisciplinary, cross-institution picnic for Caucasus and Caucasus-adjacent studies this coming weekend. If you'd like to join, please do, and do forward this to anyone else based in the city doing research of any kind on the region!

As part of this year's Middle Ages in Modern Games conference, a short analysis of some modern reception of the history of the Caucasus region and its roots from our own @jubalbarca.bsky.social:

A short interview with ÖAW-Präsident Heinz Faßmann (@oeaw.bsky.social) and Dr. Bruno De Nicola (@nomaland.bsky.social) on the recently signed agreement between @iranianstudies.bsky.social and the Chinggis Khaan Museum in #Mongolia. www.oeaw.ac.at/news/besuch-...

We have two post-doctoral roles open in the PersCom team under Dr. Ariane Sadjed, looking at Jewish history in central Asia! Job outlines and application links below: www.oeaw.ac.at/jobs?jh=4xhd... www.oeaw.ac.at/jobs?jh=bcr4...

We're excited to announce a Memorandum of Understanding signed for us by ÖAW president Fassmann with the Director of the Chinggis Khaan National Museum of Mongolia! Joint historical document expertise will build new research insights on Mongolia's critical role in central Asian history & culture.

Upcoming @nomaland.bsky.social lecture TODAY at 5pm CET! "The Ottoman reception of the Nuzhat al-Qulūb (c. 1340), a Persian encyclopaedic work by Ḥamdallāh Mustawfī Qazvīnī." More info: www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/veransta... To participate online, register at oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

New project at the IFI! Dr. @jacopobrn.bsky.social's "A Tale of Pots and People" will use a data-driven approach to the ceramic finds of the Bukhara Oasis in Uzbekistan in order to look at everyday life and interactions with major events from the C3rd to C8th CE: www.oeaw.ac.at/ifi/forschun...

Now available on our website is a write-up and summaries of "A Transdisciplinary Approach to Mughal Studies", a symposium and exhibition held in honour of Prof. Ebba Koch for her 80th birthday. You can find all the talks and a summary of the event here: www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ifi/ifidi...

We have a new publication in our Iranian Studies Monographs (Veröffentlichungen zur Iranistik) series! "Hybrid Judeo-Persian and Arabic Correspondence: Eight Documents from the Cairo Genizah" provides new editions of documents from around 1000AD. Find out more at: verlag.oeaw.ac.at/en/product/h...

Another researcher currently visiting the IFI for a six-month research stay is Ghasem Gharib, a lecturer in history at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran. He is part of our NoMansLand project, and his current work is focusing on a Sufi Saint, Mir Sayyid Ali Hamadani. Welcome to Ghasem!

Another new member! Dr. Tinatin Khomeriki joins the Circulating Knowledge in the Caucasus project. She will study knowledge production, dissemination, and exchange amid Georgia's political tensions: her interests include urban anthropology, (in)security, (mis)trust and suspicion. Welcome, Tina!

We have new researchers at the IFI and we're excited to introduce them! First, social anthropologist Ila Sikharulidze is joining us within the project “Circulating Knowledge in the Caucasus” - he will analyze how knowledge disseminates among Georgian Azerbaijanis in Kvemo Kartli. Welcome, Ila!

نوروز پیروز Наврӯз пирӯз The Institute of Iranian Studies wishes you a very happy Nowruz!

Come and work with us! We have two new positions open at the IFI, both fixed-term for 36 months. These are: