Dr. Ariane Sadjed
Principal investigator of PERSCOM (ERC Consolidator grant)
Dr. Sadjed is an anthropologist and cultural historian of modern Iran. She leads the PERSCOM research group and serves as Deputy Director at the Institute of Iranian Studies. Dr. Sadjed works on the relationship between religion and modernity among Persian speaking Jewish communities, including Judeo-Persian print culture, trade networks, and migration. Read more about her work here.
Dr. Valentina Viktorovskaia
Post-doctoral researcher
Dr. Viktorovskaia joined the project in August 2025. She holds an MA from the European University at St. Petersburg and a PhD in History with the designated emphasis in Jewish studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She works on Jewish merchants in Central Asia, their legal culture and economic activities within the Russian Empire (late 19th-early 20th century) and beyond imperial borders.
Dr. Eirik Kvindesland
Post-doctoral researcher
Dr. Kvindesland has worked in this project since October 2025. He holds a doctorate in History from the University of Oxford (2024). His research centers on Jewish history in the Persian Gulf, Iranian-Jewish political history, as well as on Iranian-Jewish communities in Mandatory Palestine. Eirik's work as appeared in Past & Present and British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies.
Dr. Narciss Sohrabi
Dr. Sohrabi holds a PhD in Spatial Planning and Society from Université Paris Nanterre, France. Her research focuses on urban and public space in Iran, examining religious and minority spaces, including Armenian and Jewish communities and their built heritage. She works on Persian primary sources (memoirs and archival documents) and conducts interviews.
Dr. Neda Darabian
holds a BA in Armenian Literature from Esfahan University (2013), an MA in Ancient Iranian Culture and Languages from Kerman University (2016) and a PhD in Religious Studies from Ruhr University Bochum (2025). Her research explores inter-religious encounters in West Asia during the late antiquity and Medieval periods. She works on Judeo-Persian texts and objects, exploring the influence of Islamic and Iranian culture on medical and magical material objects and manuscripts.
Elizabetha Davitasvili, MA
researches Hebrew and Russian sources regarding Jewish history in Central Asia (19th-21st century). In addition, she also conducts interviews with Bukharan Jews in various locations.