Episode 2: Interview with Assef Ashraf

This week we interviewed Assef Ashraf about his experience in the academic job market. Assef is a lecturer in Eastern Islamic Lands and the Persian-speaking world at the University of Cambridge in the UK. Prior to Cambridge he received his B.A. from New York University in 2005, where he received the Rumi-Biruni prize for excellence in Persian Studies. He attained his Ph.D. in History from Yale University and followed that with a Post Doctoral Fellowship at Bryn Mawr College. His academic bio can be found here – https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/people/dr-assef-ashraf

Assef’s research interests “include the history of the Muslim world and the Middle East from the early modern to the present, comparative empires, travel literature, and the culture and economy of gift giving. His current research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Iran, state-society relations, and the construction of political authority in Qajar Iran.”

He has also helped to edit the newly published book The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Sphere Brill (2019)

Thanks again to Assef for sitting down with us for this interview