The Material Histories@IFI group brings together a team of researchers within the IFI working at the intersection of material culture studies and text-based historical research. Our aim is to bring archaeology and materiality, landscape, rural development and historical urbanism into conversation with epigraphy, numismatics and written documents for new perspectives on urban and rural lives and livelihoods in the longue durée, with a focus on the long first millennium, but open to other chronologies.
The group is conceived as a collaborative platform for the exchange of ideas and the comparative discussion of data emerging from individual research projects. Its activities include internal and informal meetings, laboratory sessions, and occasional workshops and lectures involving external collaborators or specialists on individual topics, who are invited to discuss different methodological perspectives and explore potential synergies.
The initiative forms part of the Institute’s long-term strategy to develop and promote innovative transdisciplinary research and new perspectives on material cultures and histories in Iran, Central Asia and the Caucasus. By encouraging integrated approaches and collaborative research practices, it contributes to consolidating and expanding the Institute’s sustained participation in national and international research partnerships.
The activities of the Material Histories@IFI group are structured flexibly around a series of formats designed to encourage dialogue, methodological reflection, and collaborative research. In this way the group seeks to promote sustained exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the visibility of research conducted at the Institute.
