#  About Me 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

   ![Shahrad Shahvand](/sites/g/files/omnuum4786/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2024-12/D7B66179-57B8-45D2-A77A-65FA71AA0A44.jpeg?itok=288dyxKa) 

 

As a historian of religion, I specialize in the intellectual and social histories of the Turco-Persianate and Indo-Islamic lands. My research broadly engages with the dynamic interplay of scholars and intellectuals, centers of learning, urban landscapes, and empires, drawing on sources in Arabic, Persian, Chaghatay Turkish, and Urdu.

I received my PhD in Islamic Studies from Harvard University in 2023, following a Master of Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School in 2015 and a Master of International Relations from the University of Tehran in 2011. [My doctoral dissertation](https://www.proquest.com/pqdtglobal/docview/2892420368/BF1AFD65771A450BPQ/8?accountid=11311&sourcetype=Dissertations%20&%20Theses) explored the life and writings of Qadi Nurullah Shushtari (d. 1610), a prominent Iranian scholar trained in the Safavid cities of Shushtar and Mashhad, whose legal and intellectual career in Lahore and Agra (in northern India) unfolded amidst the flourishing intellectual exchanges and fervent religious debates of the Safavid, Mughal, and Ottoman empires during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Currently, my research delves into the intellectual and social histories of Timurid Iran and Central Asia during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. I am particularly interested in the educational institutions and scholarly contributions of Herat-based Timurid intellectuals and their connections with other notable centers such as Samarqand, Tabriz, and Shiraz.

I serve as the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University and as a teaching fellow for courses on the Quran, the Prophet, and early Islamic history at the Divinity School. Previously, I was the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Postdoctoral Fellow in Islamic Studies at Harvard for the 2023–2024 academic year.