Iran

Ali Ansari charts a journey through the last two hundred years of Iran’s turbulent history.

About the event

Both revolutionary and reactionary, the Islamic Republic of Iran has long been a conundrum for Western observers. A theocracy that aspires to a popular mandate; an anti-colonial state with imperial pretensions of its own: modern Iran is in many ways a reflection of its struggle to reconcile its traditions with the challenges of modernity.

Beginning with the country’s fall from grace as a Great Power in the 19th century, Ali Ansari reveals how the experience of history and Iran’s encounter with ‘modernity’ have come to define it – and set it on an authoritarian path in confrontation with the West and, often, its own people.

About the speaker

Ali Ansari is Professor of Iranian History and Founding Director of the institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St Andrews. He is also an Associate Fellow at Chatham House and sits on the Governing Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS). His work appears in The Guardian, The Independent, and the New Statesman, among other publications.