GRANTS AWARDED IN 2025
The Iran Heritage Foundation’s grants are awarded on a competitive basis to scholars and researchers whose work contributes to the study and preservation of Iran’s rich cultural heritage. We are delighted to celebrate the achievements of last year’s recipients, whose achievements continue to make a lasting impact in the field.
April Awards
Dr Assef Ashraf received a grant for her project, E.G. Browne and the Making of Iranian Studies. This project is a scholarly conference organised to mark the centenary of Edward Granville Browne’s death in 1926 as well as his legacy and impact on the formation and development of Iranian Studies.
Dr Maryam Heydarkhani received a grant for her project, Living Architecture: Social and Spatial Transformations of Qajar Madrasas in Nineteenth Century Iran. The grant from IHF supports the necessary ancillary expenses connected with the proposed publication.
Dr Hossein Hadisi and Ms Solmaz Naraghi received a grant for their project, Alpha Bird (Alphabetic Bird). This project explores the geometric structure of letters and their organic potential to fit within an oblique oval form (resembling an egg shape). Through the languages of imagery, play, and movement, AlphaBird aims to offer a fresh educational platform for transmitting this ancient art.
Dr Richard McClary received a grant for his project, Iranian Lustre Ware: The Vessels and Sherds (1150-1300). The grant from IHF supports applicant’s fieldwork for a monograph on Iranian lustreware ceramics. The project also involves compiling an open-access database and inscription catalogue to document and share findings widely.
Dr Siavash Rafiee Rad received a grant for his project, Language Diversity in Iran (16th century to 18th century). This project focuses on compiling a comprehensive catalogue of Persian-language manuscripts from the 16th to 18th centuries that reference or describe non-Persian languages spoken in Iran.
Dr Yusen Yu received a grant for his project, Chairs and Change: Furnishing Mongol Iran. The grant from IHF supports applicant’s research trip to London. This project seeks to re-visit this topic, by focusing on Iran under the Mongols, and investigates the changing meaning of furniture during a century of radical social and cultural transformation, in comparison to the earlier Caliphal period.
Ms Leila Danesh received a grant for her project, Wooden Hypostyle Mosques of the Iranian World. The grant from IHF supports applicant’s field work for the proposed research. This project investigates the rare tradition of wooden hypostyle mosques in the Islamic world, focusing on surviving examples in Iran, Turkey and Tajikistan.
October Awards
Dr Hamid Shakeri received a grant for his project, A Sociological Study of Modern Painting in Qajar Iran (from the Nineteenth to Early Twentieth Century): From Reform-Oriented Treatises and Manuscripts to the Artistic Field of the Constitutional Revolution. This research provides a generative and interdisciplinary analysis of the transformation of Iranian painting during the Qajar period, combining historical-artistic contextualisation with sociological methodology.
Dr Hannah Caroe received a grant for her project, Hotu Cave: 12,000 years of prehistory and history in NE Iran. The grant from IHF supports the applicant’s research as a visiting scholar at the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford.
Ms Shirin Fathi received a grant for her project, Demonic Skins. This project investigates the representation of gender and transformation in Iranian mythical creatures, particularly the Divs, through archival research and contemporary performance practice.
Professor Sussan Babaie and Dr. Heather Ecker received a grant for their project, Stars Over Mashhad: Empiricism, Globalism, and the Creative Imagination in Seventeenth Century Iran. The grant from IHF supports a detailed study of the comments, expansions and updates made by an early seventeenth-century Persian astronomer, Hasan bin Saʿd al-Qaʾini, in his Persian translation of ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Sufi’s Kitab suwar al-kawakib al-thabita (Book of the Constellations of the Fixed Stars).
