September 2015 | BIPS Research Grant

This report covers the BIPS-funded workshop that we held at the London School of Economics on 19 May 2016, hosted by the LSE Middle East Centre and co-sponsored by the LSE Kuwait Programme. BIPS was kind offer to provide us a grant of £2,700 for this workshop.

We were gratified to receive nearly 60 applications from 20 countries in response to our call for papers for this invitation-only workshop. The applications were vetted by a panel consisting of myself and the other two workshop commentators, Professor Houchang Chehabi and Professor Cyrus Schayegh. We selected 9 workshop participants, divided into three panels covering ‘Transnational and International Relations,’ ‘Development and Modernisation,’ and ‘Ideas, Culture and Law.’ I attach a copy of the workshop programme for your information. In addition a number of leading scholars of the Pahlavi era attended the workshop, including Professor Ali Ansari, Professor Louise Fawcett, and Dr Stephanie Cronin. An open invitation was also extended to any BIPS members who wished to attend via Professor Ansari, President of BIPS.

The intimate scholarly atmosphere of the workshop allowed the participants to receive detailed feedback on their work, including via exchanges with the commentators both before and after the workshop. The papers were generally of a very high quality and all explored exciting new dimensions of the cultural, political, and social history of Pahlavi Iran from a global perspective. The diverse backgrounds of the presenters, ranging from Art History to Diplomatic History to Economics to Law, allowed us to go beyond the usual narratives that dominate discussions of the Pahlavi period to new questions that explore the impact of global forces on Iran, and the role of Iran in the world in the 1960s and 1970s.

I have now asked a selection of the conference participants to submit revised versions of their papers for inclusion in a volume that I will edit. I am in the process of securing a publishing agreement for this edited volume.

Pahlavi Iran, 1941-1979: A Global History Workshop

London School of Economics and Political Science
19 May 2016
Sponsored by the LSE Kuwait Programme and the British Institute of Persian Studies

WORKSHOP PROGRAMME
9.00 – 10.00am Registration and Breakfast Refreshments
10am-12.00pm Session One: International and Transnational Relations
Chair: Dr Roham Alvandi, LSE
Dr Fernando Padilla, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Looking for Friends: Pinochet’s connection
with Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, 1974-1979
Dr Naysan Rafati, Institut français des relationsinternationales, His Majesty’s Disloyal Opposition:
Ba’athist Iraq and Anti-Pahlavi Exiles
Mr Robert Steele, University of Exeter, International Diplomacy and the 2500th Anniversary
Celebration

12.00-1.00pm Lunch

1.00-3.00pm Session Two: Development and Modernisation
Chair: Dr Cyrus Schayegh, Princeton University
Mr Maziyar Ghiabi, University of Oxford, Narcotic Iran: Life and Politics of Narcotic Drugs under the
Pahlavi State
Ms Azam Khatam, York University, Conceptions of the Capital and Urban Planning for Tehran in
Pahlavi Iran (1950-70s)
Dr Ramin Nassehi, SOAS, University of London, Domesticating Cold War Economic Ideologies: The
Emergence of Iranian Developmentalism in the 1950s and 1960s

3.00-3.30pm Coffee Break
3.30-5.30pm Session Three: Ideas, Culture and Law
Chair: Dr Houchang Chehabi, Boston University
Dr Claudia Castiglioni, University of Florence, ‘Anti-Imperialism of Fools’? The European Intellectual
Left and the Iranian Revolution
Dr Katayoun Shafiee, National University of Singapore, Petroleum Law in the Making: How
International Law was Transformed by its Encounter with Anglo-Iranian Oil
Ms Samine Tabatabaei, McGill University, Nation Branding: The Prospect of Collecting Modern Art