Visit Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi's profile on the York Research Database to:
- See a full list of publications
- Browse activities and projects
- Explore connections, collaborators, related work and more
DPhil (Oxon) FRHistS
Eskandar is a historian of West Asia (Middle East), with a particular focus on the modern intellectual and political history of Iran and the wider Shi'i Muslim world. In disciplinary terms, he works at the intersection of intellectual and political history, the history of political thought, and postcolonial theory.
Prior to coming to the University of York, Eskandar taught and lectured at Goldsmiths, University of London, the University of Exeter, and the University of Oxford and he was a British Academy Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oxford between 2016 and 2019.
His first monograph, Revolution and its Discontents: Political Thought and Reform in Iran, traced the political, intellectual and ideological genealogies of Iran’s post-revolutionary reform movement in the context of the global Cold War and Euro-American traditions of Cold War liberalism and was published by Cambridge University Press in 2019.
Eskandar has also extensively researched and published on the history of Iranian intellectuals, political militants and clandestine organisations during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the intellectual lineages of “Third Worldism” in modern Iran. This research has sought to situate modern Iran’s history within a larger global frame, highlighting in particular the sprawling transnational networks, relations and activities between lesser-known political organisations comprising part of the radical opposition to the Pahlavi regime, and likeminded movements across the Global South.
He co-edited Political Parties in the Middle East (Routledge, 2019) and edited a new expanded edition of Fred Halliday’s Iran: Dictatorship and Development (Oneworld, 2024) first published in 1979.
Eskandar is currently working on two further monograph projects. The first project is an intellectual biography of the Iranian intellectual and dissident Jalal Al-e Ahmad (d. 1969) and will be published as part of the prestigious Makers of the Muslim World book series. The second research monograph examines the intersecting histories of Muslim socialism and Islamic egalitarianism and Muslim intellectuals and Islamic movements’ engagement with Marxist, socialist, and anarchist theory, ideas, political parties, and organisations across the twentieth-century.
Eskandar’s research interests include the history and contemporary politics of modern Iran, the modern intellectual history of Iran, political thought in the modern Middle East and North Africa, histories of decolonisation and the global Cold War, histories of revolutionary social movements in the modern Middle East, Islamist social movements and ideologies, global histories of socialism and Marxism, as well as postcolonial and decolonial theory.
An example of modules taught:
An example of modules taught:
Eskandar is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and series editor of Radical Histories of the Middle East (Oneworld Publications). He also previously served as an associate editor at the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and Politics.
Eskandar regularly writes on the politics and international relations of the Middle East for online media and journals including New Left Review's Sidecar, Foreign Policy, Jadaliyya, Al Jazeera, Lobelog, Muftah, Jacobin, and The Guardian.
Student hours