Khodadad Rezakhani

Rezakhani was born in Tehran, Iran and was educated in Europe and Iran before moving to the United States. He later moved back to London, UK where he earned his MSc in History from London School of Economics and a PhD in Late Antique/Middle Eastern History from UCLA with a dissertation titled [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/722516861 Empires and Microsystems : Late Antique Regional Economy in Central and West Asia, 500-750] under the supervision of Michael G. Morony and advised by Patrick J. Geary, Claudia Rapp, and Sanjay Subrahmanyam. Because of his multicultural background and education, Rezakhani is fluent in English, Persian and a number of other research and modern languages.

Since earning his PhD, Rezakhani became a research officer at the London School of Economics where he worked on an ERC funded project, Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Global Histories of Material Progress in the East and the West (URKEW).{{cite web |title=URKEW Project Website |url=http://www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/Research/URKEW/URKEW |website=London School of Economics}} He also taught as a teaching fellow the LSE, SOAS, and AKU, as well as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno.

From 2014 to 2016, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung fellow at the Freie Universität, Berlin.{{cite web |title=Wm. Calder III Fellows |url=https://www.americanfriendsofavh.org/programs-awards-fellowships |website=American Fellows of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation}} Since 2016, he has been an associate research scholar and lecturer at Princeton University.{{cite web |last1=Rezakhani |first1=Khodadad|title=Sharmin and Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies (Khodadad Rezakhani) |url=https://iran.princeton.edu/people/khodadad-rezakhani |website=MRC |access-date=5 May 2020}}

Rezakhani has also been involved in various projects for the academic study of late antique Iran and Central Asia, as well as Global Late Antiquity. He is the founder and manager of rotating Twitter accounts [https://twitter.com/Tweetistorian?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor Tweeting Historians] and [https://twitter.com/HistorianofIran Historians of Iran], which aim to promote the works of the historians of Iranian and global history by presenting their work in form of weekly tweets concerned with each scholar's research. He is also the founder and author of [http://www.Iranologie.com Iranologie.com], a site dedicated to the history of Iran since 1997.

Rezakhani is a Global historian who has published on Late Antique Iran and Central Asia, particularly Sasanian history. Educated initially in philology (including Indo-European Studies) and medieval history, Rezakhani's work encompasses comparative approaches to World History, using Central and West Asia as areas of focus and encompassing matters of culture, language, and economic and political history. Chronologically, Rezakhani's research is most concerned with the first millennium, particularly the period of transition from late antiquity to Early Islam.{{cite web|url=https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/KhodadadRezakhani/|title=Khodadad Rezakhani - Freie Universität Berlin - Academia.edu|website=fu-berlin.academia.edu}}

Rezakhani's interest in Central Asian history has also resulted in works concerned with the historiography of the Silk Road and its creation in 19th century Europe as part of colonial historiography. His denial of the concept of the Silk Road, reflected in his article on the subject, [https://muse.jhu.edu/article/430307/pdf the Road that Never Was] and is the basis of a forthcoming volume, Creating the Silk Road: Travel, Trade and Myth-Making (I.B. Tauris, forthcoming);.{{cite web|url=http://www.ibtauris.com/Books/Humanities/History/Creating-the-Silk-Road-Travel-Trade-and-MythMaking?menuitem=%7B33E2E1B2-D37C-47D2-9984-8F332F3214BA%7D|title=Creating the Silk Road: Travel, Trade and Myth-Making|website=www.ibtauris.com}} His monograph on the history of Central Asia, called ReOrienting the Sasanians, provided a political history of Central Asia (including Afghanistan and Transoxiana) from the Indo-Parthian period to the coming of Islam, and included the history of the Kushans, Iranian Huns, the Kidarites, Hephthalites, Nezak Shah, and the Western Turk Empire. In 2018, the book was the recipient of the Honourable Mention in the Ehsan Yarshater Book Award.{{cite web |title=Ehsan Yarshater Book Award |url=https://associationforiranianstudies.org/awards/ehsanYarshater |website=Association for Iranian Studies}}

Rezakhani's contribution to the critiques of concepts prevalent in both academic history-writing and popular historical imagination about Iran and Asia, including the idea of Iranians as "Aryans",{{cite web|url=https://www.radiofarda.com/a/f7-taboo-e2-over-aryan-blood/27990170.html|title=ایده "نژاد آریایی" زاییده چیست؟|website=رادیو فردا}} Nowruz as an "Indo-European" tradition,{{cite web|url=https://iranologie.com/the-history-page/nowruz-in-history/|title=Nowruz in History|date=27 March 2014}} representations of "the Ancients" in contemporary Iranian discourse{{cite journal|url=https://www.academia.edu/31614694|title=The Present in the Mind's Past: Imagining the Ancients in the Iranian Popularization of Pre-Islamic History|first=Khodadad|last=Rezakhani}} and other subjects.

He is a regular contributor to Iranian and English media, with contributions to BBC Persian, VOA Persian and Radio Farda, as well as to popular history journals such as History Today. Rezakhani runs the History of Iran podcast{{cite web|url=https://iranologie.com/|title=Iranologie.com|website=Iranologie.com}} and is an editor at the Sasanika Project.{{cite web|url=https://www.sasanika.org/|title=Sasanika - A History Reference Site for Sasanian Empire|website=Sasanika}}

• ReOrienting the Sasanians: East Iran in Late Antiquity (Edinburgh University Press, 2017);{{cite web|url=https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-reorienting-the-sasanians.html|title=ReOrienting the Sasanians|website=Edinburgh University Press Books}}
• The Anonymous Syriac Chronicle Known as the Chronicle of Khuzistan (Rūydādnāme-ye Khūzestān) (Hekmat-e Sina, 2016).{{cite web |title=رویدادنامه خوزستان |url=https://cgie.org.ir/fa/news/154479 |website=مرکز دایره المعارف بزرگ اسلامی}}
• (with Touraj Daryaee)From Oxus to Euphrates: The World of Late Antique Iran (H&S Media, 2016)
• (editor)Excavating an Empire: Achaemenid Persia in Longue Durée (with Touraj Daryaee and Ali Mousavi, Mazda Publishers, 2014)
• Iranians on the Silk Road: Merchants, Kingdoms, and Religions (with Matteo Compareti, 2010)

• [https://www.historytoday.com/archive/arab-conquests-and-sasanian-iran Arab Conquests and Sasanian Iran] (History Today)
• [https://ajammc.com/2018/04/29/reza-shahs-mummy/ Reza Shah's Mummy, back from the dead, haunts Iranian politics] (Ajam Media)

• [https://read.dukeupressedu/cssaame/article-abstract/30/3/420/59629 the Road that Never Was: the Silk Road and Trans-Eurasian Exchange]{{Dead link|date=May 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}
• [https://www.academia.edu/37595236/The_Rebellion_of_Babak_and_the_Historiography_of_the_Southern_Caucasus The Rebellion of Babak and the Historiography of Southern Caucasus.]
• [https://www.academia.edu/42263839/West_Asia_-_a_Companion_to_the_Global_Early_Middle_Ages West Asia, 600-900]
• [https://www.academia.edu/15122398/Continuity_and_Change_in_Late_Antique_Iran_An_Economic_View_of_the_Sasanians From Miirosan to Khurasan: Huns, Alkhans, and the Creation of East Iran]
• [https://brill.com/view/journals/jesh/57/2/article-p231_4.xml Markets for Land, Labour and Capital in Late Antique Iraq, AD 200-700 (with Michael Morony)]
• [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00210862.2014.947696 Mazdakism, Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism: In search of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in late antique Iran]
• [https://www.academia.edu/15122398/Continuity_and_Change_in_Late_Antique_Iran_An_Economic_View_of_the_Sasanians Continuity and Change in Late Antique Irān: An Economic View of the Sasanians]

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.iranologie.com Iranologie.com] (the personal web page of Khodadad Rezakhani, including his History of Iran pages)
• [https://fu-berlin.academia.edu/KhodadadRezakhani Khodadad Rezakhani's Academia Page]
• [https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/khodadad-rezakhani Khodadad Rezakhani] at Leiden University

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Category:21st-century Iranian historians

Category:Historians of Iran

Category:Historians of Central Asia

Category:Princeton University faculty

Category:Alumni of the London School of Economics

Category:University of California, Los Angeles alumni

Category:Living people

Category:1976 births

Category:Iranian Iranologists

Category:Academics from Tehran