AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership (CDP) studentship
The British Museum, and the University of St Andrews are pleased to announce the availability of a fully funded Collaborative doctoral studentship from October 2023 under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme.
This project will be jointly supervised by Dr Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Dr Tom Hockenhull at the British Museum and Professor Ali Ansari and Dr Siavush Randjbar-Daemi at the University of St Andrews. The student will be expected to spend time at both The British Museum and University of St Andrews, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK. The studentship can be studied either full or part-time.
The project seeks to understand how Iran’s Pahlavi regime (1925–1979) defined and projected its identity through analysis of the circulating official iconography on coins, banknotes and commemorative medals. It will study how the two Pahlavi shahs fused Persian history and culture with western-style iconography to forge a distinct vision for modern Iran, in the process creating a political and societal divide that took full force during the 1979 Islamic Revolution, persisting to the present. The project will contextualise this highly significant body of material within what was a transformational period for Iran economically, politically and culturally.
The British Museum’s substantial and visually significant collection of coins, banknotes and medals from the Pahlavi period, will be the primary focus of this study.
Start date: 1st October 2023
Application Deadline: 9th June 2023