Abbas SIAVASH ABKENAR

Research Project
Abbas Siavash Abkenar is a doctoral (Ph.D.) candidate at the Leiden Institute for Area Studies (LIAS) and the Department for the Studies of Asia and Mediterranean Africa (DSAAM) at the Ca' Foscari University of Venice. His research project focuses on the Iranian discourses on modernization and progressivism, cultural reforms, and education during the Qajar period (18th-20th centuries). The project, in a double degree (DD) partnership with the Leiden University School of Middle Eastern Studies (SMES), is part of the DSAAM's Ph.D. program, funded by Ca' Foscari University of Venice and MIUR (The Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research).

Ph.D. Inquiry
Siavash's research sets out to study different educational paradigms and the development of schools for Jews and Christians (Armenian and Assyro-Chaldeans) in Iran alongside the emergence of discourses on modernization, socio-economic progress, and cultural reforms during the Qajar period. He follows the transformation of the Qajar's public sphere and its mutual interaction with the communal spaces (in ethnoreligious minority contexts), focusing primarily on the role and affinities of intermediaries, middleman agents and belonging networks as state and non-state actors.

Supervisors: Stefano Pello', Tsolin Nalbantian

Promotors: Gabrielle van den Berg, Aldo Ferrari

Study Areas
Siavash is broadly interested in concepts of social-spatial theory and methods of complex systems analyses associated with cultural studies to understand modernities in conversion along the Afroeurasian transition zone. His research includes mainly Iran and Europe, expanding further to the Middle East and the Caucasus. He is particularly interested in the transition of ideas, mobility of people/objects and knowledge exchange in the Modern Era; with his experiments centered around the role of microstructures, mediators, and networks in literary and historical investigations.

Bio
Siavash received his BA in Italian language and literature from the University of Tehran and continued his studies with master's degrees in European history and literature from the University of Bologna and the University of Strasbourg. He then followed with another professional master's in religious studies at the Foundation for Religious Sciences John XXIII (FSCIRE) and the Giuseppe Alberigo European School for Advanced Religious Studies, focusing on the historiography and doctrines of the Abrahamic religions.