The IFI focuses on cultural processes throughout history within a geographic area that encompasses the countries that are today officially Persian-speaking—Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan—as well as neighboring regions historically shaped by the influence of the Persian language and culture (“Persophony” / “Persianate Societies/Cultures”) (Central Asia, the Caucasus, Anatolia, South Asia, and in some cases beyond), and also includes Iranian diaspora communities.
The IFI’s key research areas include the cultural and social history of Iran and Persianate societies in the early modern and modern periods, particularly from the 16th to the 20th centuries; the broader region of Eastern Iran, Afghanistan, and Central Asia from antiquity to the present; Iranian onomastics; Indo-Iranian poetic language; manuscript, archival, and knowledge cultures; landscapes/citiescapes, connectivity, and local-transregional processes; relations between the Iranian region and Europe since the Middle Ages. New research areas at the IFI are dedicated to research on Persianate Jewish history, as well as historical and ethnographic research on the Caucasus region in modern and contemporary times.
Broader research areas—some of which span multiple projects and working groups—explore theoretical and methodological questions related to manuscript cultures and cultures of documentation Manuscript Cultures, as well as at the intersections between material culture and written tradition Material Histories, between historical and literary-historical research, and between historical and anthropological research.
Research at the IFI is organized into four Research Groups:
