W2020/21 Lecture Series Recap – Alireza Ahmadian Lectures in Iranian and Persianate Studies

The Alireza Ahmadian Lectures in Iranian and Persianate Studies for the Winter 2020/21 has successfully concluded on July 24, 2021 with the final lecture of the series conducted on the same day. The W2020/21 series ran from September 2020 up until July 2021, with a total of 17 lectures all held online via Zoom.

Throughout this time, we have engaged in a wide range of topics within Iranian and Persianate Studies including Persian literature, gender issues, film, music, media, and more. We were fortunate to have amazing speakers join us from not only Canada, but also from around the globe calling in from the US, the UK, Iran, Australia, and China. We are thankful to the speakers who gracefully share their precious work and knowledge with us and allow us to engage in meaningful academic conversation. Especially in these times where it has been made difficult to meet with others, this series has allowed us to gain a stronger sense of community in Iranian and Persianate Studies through the shared passion for gaining new knowledge and through comradery from connecting with one another.

1) Top Row filmmakers, Ali Jenaban & Amin Pourbarghi; Bottom Row host, Mostafa Abedinifard & speaker, Elham Naeej (January 16th, 2021 lecture)

2) Speaker, Farshid Kazemi giving his presentation (January 30th, 2021 lecture)

3) Speaker Marjan Moosavi giving her land acknowledgement (May 15th, 2021 lecture)

We would like to sincerely thank all of the attendees who have joined us for the W2020/2021 Alireza Ahmadian lecture series. Thank you to our wonderful host Dr. Mostafa Abedinifard, as every event in the series would not be the same without Dr. Abedinifard’s warm welcomes and engaging insights in connecting vibrant academic discussion between the speakers and participants. We give our sincerest appreciation towards the Ahmadian family for their generous funding in honour of beloved UBC Asian Studies Alumnus and member of Canadian-Iranian community, Alireza Ahmadian. This series would have not been possible without the Ahmadian family and friends who have allowed us to help create such opportunity for discussion and connecting engagement surrounding Iranian and Persianate topics from academics around the globe.

We would also like to thank our behind-the-scenes team, Sophie Gardner, Connie Yuchun Wu and Anh Luu who have volunteered their time and skills to assist in making the series go as smoothly as it has. Aside from bringing a bright energy and giving support at events, Razman Goudarzi has also taken the time to create detailed posters for each event we have held in the W2020/2021 Alireza Ahmadian lecture series. As our events have been held online, we have been making effort to increase accessibility by providing closed captioning in our Zoom Webinars. Thank you to our participants for feedback on the closed captioning, speakers for providing their scripts in advance and especially thank you to our amazing volunteers Arian Zand and Darius Dharsi for volunteering their time and taking on the task of manually entering live-captions for our participants.

About the Alireza Ahmadian Lectures in Iranian and Persianate Studies: Alireza Ahmadian (1981 – 2019) was an enthusiastic researcher, a consummate socio-political analyst, and an opinion leader on foreign policy who nurtured the virtues of diplomatic dialogue and liberal democracy. Alireza was a proud and devoted UBC alumnus, supporter of UBC’s Asian Studies department, and beloved member of Canadian-Iranian Community. UBC’s Asian Studies department renamed this lecture series in his honour in 2019. Alireza’s friends in the community have provided funding to support this series, and this generous gift will see these important academic and community engagement events supported through to the end of the 2025/2026 academic year.
To access the full list of events, click here.

Lecture Recordings

Some of our lecture recordings have been made available on the Asian Studies Youtube Channel with the permission of the guest speakers. Click the links below to watch: