Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic
Join the LSE Middle East Centre for the launch of Shabnam Holliday's new book, 'Sovereignty in Iran: Challenges to Eurocentrism from Ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic'. This book is a multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative project examining sovereignties as a plural concept through the case of Iran. In so doing it challenges Eurocentric assumptions in the Humanities and Social Sciences and covers sovereignty from ancient Iran to the Islamic Republic including the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
Part One of the book explores sovereignty in ancient Iran by looking at the Elamites through a theoretical lens, the Achaemenids, and the Parthians and Sasanians. Part Two explores how territory relates to sovereignty alongside other dynamics in the Safavid, Second World War, Pahlavi and Islamic Republic periods. Part Three then focuses on competing and co-existing sovereignties in the southern Persian Gulf at the beginning of the twentieth century in Kurdistan and its relationships with Iranian governments during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well as in the Woman, Life, Freedom protests.
The book adopts a non-Eurocentric framework which requires the reader to think about co-existing and competing sovereignties with an ‘Area Studies’ lens. This approach moves beyond periodised understandings of history and not only contributes to better understanding Eurocentrism but also enables a greater appreciation of contexts, complexities and agencies.
Meet our speakers
Shabnam Holliday is Associate Professor in International Relations at the University of Plymouth. In April 2023, Dr Holliday was appointed Research Director at the British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) and is also a Fellow at Sectarianism, Proxies and Desectarianisation project (SEPAD) at Lancaster University. Her research has two areas of focus. The first is the relationship between the role of ideas and political change, revolution and legitimacy in post-revolutionary situations through the case of Iran. The second explores approaches towards a more inclusive and non-Eurocentric International Relations (IR).
Asma Abdi is an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Exeter and an incoming Lecturer in Global Political Economy at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on social reproduction, gender, and the political economy of war and sanctions, with a focus mostly on Iran. Her work has been published in a range of political and feminist journals, including International Feminist Journal of Politics, Social Politics, and Jadaliyya. Asma’s research has received several awards, including the 2025 Political Studies Association (PSA) Elizabeth Wiskemann Prize for the best PhD dissertation in the study of (in)Equality and Social Justice, and the 2025 Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize for the best PhD dissertation on a Middle Eastern topic.
Edward Wastnidge is Senior Lecturer and Head of Politics and International Studies at the Open University, UK. Edward’s research focuses on Iranian foreign policy, the intersection of ideas and foreign policy in the Islamic Republic, and Iran’s cultural and religious diplomacy. Dr Wastnidge is Deputy Director of the Sectarianism, Proxies and Desectarianisation project (SEPAD) at Lancaster University, and co-editor of the Identities and Geopolitics in the Middle East book series with Manchester University Press.
Meet our chair
Katerina Dalacoura is Associate Professor in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Director of the LSE Middle East Centre. She held a Major Research Fellowship by the Leverhulme Trust between 2021 and 2024. The project findings will shortly be published as a book monograph by Cambridge University Press, under the title Islamic International Thought in Turkey: History, Civilisation and Nation.
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