Dr. Arash Ghajarjazi

Researcher
Religious Studies
Islam and Arabic
a.ghajarjazi@uu.nl

I am a scholar of Iranian Studies working at the intersection of media history and memory studies, with a focus on the late modern period from the 1850s to the 1950s. I am currently a postdoctoral researcher on the ERC Advanced Grant project Beyond Sharia. I have published two monographs, and several articles and book chapters on the media and cultural history of Iran's modernity. My academic background includes English Language and Culture (B.A.), Media and Performance Studies (M.A.), and Philosophy and Religious Studies (Ph.D.).

My first monograph, Irrationalities in Islam and Media in Nineteenth-Century Iran (2022), offers a media-archaeological perspective on the Iranian context. The book aims to establish a theoretical and archival foundation for a cultural history of modern media and religious change in Iran.

My second monograph is Remembering Umar Khayyam: Episodes of Unbelief in the Reception Histories of Persian Quatrains (2025). The book offers new insights into the interplay of religion, memory, and literature in Iran's history of secular thought. It centres on the continued reception of Omar Khayyām’s poetry from the medieval to the late modern period. I am currently working on a third monograph on the cultural history of early radio in Iran. 

As a member of the Department of Religious Studies, I have contributed to the Research Master's program in Religious Studies since 2022, where I taught "Core Themes in the Study of Religions" and have regularly participated as a guest speaker in the joint UU-UvA course on "Theories and Methods" on the history of photography. I have also created and performed a lecture performance about Iran's 2022 movement titled Knot, About Iran?! and appeared in a KNAW public lecture on Rumi en de religie van de liefde