About

Assef Ashraf is a historian of Iran and the Persianate world. He is currently University Associate Professor in the Eastern Islamic Lands and Persian-Speaking World at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Pembroke College.

His book Making and Remaking Empire in Early Qajar Iran is a study of the transition to Qajar rule in nineteenth-century Iran following the collapse of the Safavid empire.

He also co-edited The Persianate World: Rethinking a Shared Space, a volume of essays exploring the concept of the 'Persianate world', its uses, and its limits. Other aspects of his research have been published in various scholarly journals and books.

Before arriving at Cambridge, he taught at Bryn Mawr College and Central Connecticut State University. And prior to academia, he worked for three years at Human Rights Watch. 

At Cambridge, he teaches the pre-modern and modern histories of Iran, the Persianate world, and the Middle East.