Our Team
Ali Mousavi
| Director of the Archaeological Gazetteer of Iran |
| E-mail: amousavi@humnet.ucla.edu |
| Office: Kaplan Hall 392 |
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M. Rahim Shayegan
Director of the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World
E-mail: shayegan@humnet.ucla.edu
358 Royce Hall
M. Rahim Shayegan is the Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Professor of Iranian, and director of Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World. He completed his BA at the University of Cologne, Germany, and obtained his MA from the University of Sorbonne in Paris, followed by doctoral work at the University of Göttingen. He received his PhD from Harvard University, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, before joining the NELC faculty at UCLA. He has been the recipient of number of awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship (2013–14).
He has authored and co-edited several books, among them Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia (Cambridge UP, 2011); Aspects of History and Epic in Ancient Iran (Center for Hellenic Studies—Harvard UP, 2012); The Talmud in Its Iranian Context (co-editor, Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010); Persia beyond the Oxus (guest editor, Bulletin of the Asia Institute, 2012); and Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore (2019 – Harvard University Press). He is currently working on a number of edited volumes on the Achaemenid and Sasanian empires, among them the forthcoming volume Companion to the Sasanian Empire (Wiley-Blackwell). In addition, he is preparing a new critical edition and translation of the Sasanian royal and private inscriptions, as well as a multivolume study on the History of the Sasanian Empire (third to seventh century CE) for Cambridge University Press.
Marissa Stevens
Assistant Director of the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World
E-mail: stevensma@humnet.ucla.edu
360 Royce Hall
Marissa Stevens is the Assistant Director of the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World. Trained as an Egyptologist who studies the materiality, social history, and texts of the Third Intermediate Period and Late Period, she first earned an Honors B.A. in History and Sociology from Washington & Jefferson College and an M.A. from the University of Chicago, before completing her Ph.D. at the University of California, Los Angeles in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.
Her dissertation focused on 21st Dynasty funerary papyri to determine funerary iconography’s role in defining an individual’s social identity, specifically with respect to titles, social position, family lineage, and gender of the Theban elite. Combining art historical and linguistic approaches, her research interests focus on how objects can solidify, maintain, and perpetuate social identity, especially in times of crisis when more traditional means of self-identification are absent.
Advisory Board
University of California, Los Angeles |
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Warwick Ball |
Editor Emeritus, Afghanistan published by the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies |
The French National Center for Scientific Research, Lyon |
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The University of California, Los Angeles |
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Institute of Historical Research, the National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens |