Biography
Robert Steele is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies, working on the cultural and intellectual history of modern Iran, with a focus on the Pahlavi period. He has a PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies from the University of Exeter and an MPhil in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Manchester. From 2021 to 2022 he was a visiting research fellow at the Department of International History at the London School of Economics, and from 2019 until 2021, he was the inaugural Jahangir and Eleanor Amuzegar Postdoctoral Fellow in Modern Iranian History, at the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Main Research Focal Points
Main Research Focal Points
- Cultural and intellectual history of modern Iran
- Historiography of Pahlavi Iran
- Iran’s global interactions in the twentieth century
Current Projects
Current Projects
Selected Publications
Selected Publications
- Robert Steele, Pahlavi Iran’s Relations with Africa: Cultural and Political Connections in the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [forthcoming, 2024].
- Firoozeh Kashani Sabet and Robert Steele (eds.), Iran and Global Decolonisation: Politics and Resistance After Empire. London: Gingko Library, 2023.
- Robert Steele, The Shah’s Imperial Celebrations of 1971: Nationalism, Culture and Politics in Late Pahlavi Iran. London: I.B. Tauris, 2020.
- Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet and Robert Steele, ‘Introduction: Iran and Global Decolonisation’, in Iran and Decolonisation: Politics and Resistance After Empire, ed. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet and Robert Steele, 1-28. London: Gingko Library, 2023.
- Robert Steele, ‘Iran and the Ogaden War, 1977-78’, in Iran and Decolonisation: Politics and Resistance After Empire, ed. Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet and Robert Steele, 237-271. London: Gingko Library, 2023.
- Marziyeh Bazyar and Robert Steele, ‘“The Shah’s House Became the People’s House”: Narrating Iran’s Modern History at the Pahlavi Dynasty Museum’, Iranian Studies, vol. 56, no. 3 (2023), 497-521.
- Robert Steele, ‘Iran’s Golden Age of Tourism: The Development of the Travel Industry in the Late Pahlavi Period (c.1960-1979)’, Journal of Tourism History, vol. 14, no. 3 (2022), 239-262.
- Robert Steele, ‘Crowning the “Sun of the Aryans”: Mohammad Reza Shah’s Coronation and Monarchical Spectacle in Pahlavi Iran’, International Journal of Middle East Studies, vol. 53, no. 2 (2021), 175-193.
- Robert Steele, ‘Two Kings of Kings: Iran-Ethiopia Relations under the Shah and Haile Selassie’, The International History Review, vol. 43, no. 6 (2021), 1375-1392.
- Robert Steele, ‘The Keur Farah Pahlavi Project and Iranian-Senegalese Relations in the 1970s’, Iranian Studies, vol. 54, no. 1-2 (2021), 169-192.