2023 Ann Lambton Memorial Lecture

Modern Iran: A global history “from below”

With Dr Stephanie Cronin

Hosted by Duraham University, the event is jointly organised by BIPS and IMeEIS (Durham University).

The event will take place in person only and it will not be recorded.

The history of Iran has been dominated by a narrative of top-down, elite-driven and state-centred modernization and shaped and constrained by a powerful nationalist methodology. This lecture aims to problematize both these narratives.

It begins with a challenge to the argument that “history from below”/subaltern studies is impossible in the case of Iran owing to a lack of sources. On the contrary, it argues that recent work done in Iran, as well as an increasing methodological sophistication in Middle Eastern Studies more broadly, has opened up exciting new research possibilities.

The lecture then moves on to suggest ways in which the deployment of a global perspective might transform our understanding of modern Iran, looking first at the revolution of 1979, then at the theoretical insights derived from integrating into Iranian studies concepts and paradigms developed by significant figures in the wider field of social history, Eric Hobsbawm, E P Thompson and Edward Said. The lecture ends with the proposal of a global context for the issue which has recently dominated the headlines about Iran, that of veiling and its opponents.

About the speaker:

Stephanie Cronin is the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Research Fellow at St Antony’s College and is a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford where she teaches graduates in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, specifically on (1) Iranian history, Qajar and Pahlavi periods and (2) History from below in the Middle East and North Africa. She has also held an Iran Heritage Foundation fellowship for many years. She is also the Series General Editor of the Edinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World. Her recent publications include Iran: Modernism and Marginality in the Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2021) and as editor, Crime, Poverty and Survival in the Middle East and North Africa: The ‘Dangerous Classes’ since 1800 (I. B. Tauris, 2019)

Top: Ann Lambton (1912-2008)