Imagining perfection: Visions of utopia and dystopia in contemporary Iran and Persian-speaking Central Asia

Simon Theobald is an award-winning postdoctoral scholar and graduate of the Australian National University. Trained as an anthropologist, he has conducted long term ethnographic fieldwork work with Jewish and Muslim communities in Iran, Tajikistan, Germany, and Australia. His research is broadly interested in religion, values, identity, and relationships across communities. While at the Nizami Ganjavi Centre, he is working towards the publication of his first book based on his doctoral thesis.