Marral Shamshiri

Marral Shamshiri passed her PhD viva in March 2026. Her thesis was supervised by Professor John Chalcraft (LSE Government), Dr Siavush Randjbar-Daemi (St Andrews History) and Dr Sara Salem (LSE Sociology). She holds an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies (with Distinction) from St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and a BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of Bath (First-Class Honours).

Supervisory team: Professor John Chalcraft (LSE Government) and Dr Siavush Randjbar-Daemi (St Andrews)

Thesis title

'Challenging Empire in the Middle East: Revolutionary Transnationalism in the Iranian and Arab Left, 1963 – 1979'

Abstract

This dissertation is a transnational history of Iran’s radical left in the Middle East in the 1960-70s. It seeks to understand why a generation of Iranian activists turned to Third Worldist revolutions in the region, examining the tools, ideas and strategies they used across borders to overcome dictatorship and state violence in Pahlavi Iran. I ask how and why a plurality of leftist forces in Iran’s revolutionary generation coalesced around the two major anticolonial revolutions in the region, the Palestinian revolution (1965- 82) and Dhufar revolution (1965-76). By tracing the clandestine journeys, exile activism and transnational encounters of Iranian students, activists and revolutionaries across the Arab world – from Aden, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Tripoli to Vienna, Paris, London and Washington – I demonstrate how, where and why unexpected alliances and shared visions were forged between Iranian and Arab revolutionaries across physical and conceptual borders. In doing so, I trace the transformation of national-based motivations of Iranians to the formation of an anti-imperial internationalism in the region. I argue that the universal nature of Third Worldist ideas rooted in the communist tradition made this historical moment distinct, enabling non-national border-crossing relationships to take place. Showing how this took shape in the Middle East after the June 1967 war, I restore a foreclosed history of the universalist ties of emancipation forged between Iran’s forgotten leftist revolutionaries and Arab anticolonial revolutions. Beyond scholastic concerns, I aim to reactivate the unrealised potential and possibility in this ultimately defeated past, challenging existing narratives of left failure. I draw on Gramscian concepts, history from below, and historical geography to examine the expansion of transnational space into the region for the Iranian Left, a constellation of transnational sites beyond Iran’s borders including refugee camps, military bases, radical publications, clandestine radio, cities, student organisations and solidarity committees. I examine how border-crossing interactions, activities and encounters, actively transformed and constructed a transnational terrain of struggle, demonstrating the ways in which forms of resistance, solidarity and internationalism were forged in and between these sites. I draw on a range of under- and un-explored source material in Persian, Arabic and English including revolutionary memoirs, print and broadcast media, movement periodicals and pamphlets, radio transcripts, official records, visual material and oral history interviews carried out in Britain, France, Germany, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Sweden and the US.

Expertise

Transnational history, transnationalism, revolutionary movements, social and political movements, political mobilisation, global Left, anticolonialism, Third Worldism, Gramsci, Iran, Oman, Palestine