Farzaneh Hall 207
Email: kanejad@ou.edu
Kayhan A. Nejad is the Farzaneh Family Assistant Professor of Iranian Studies at the University of Oklahoma. Nejad earned his Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 2021. Before joining OU, he served as a Nizami Ganjavi Centre Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford, and as a Senior Researcher with the Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
Nejad’s research centers on the linkages between Iran, the greater Middle East, and the former Soviet Union. His book manuscript, From the Oilfield to the Battlefield: Revolutionary Internationalism on the Imperial Borderlands, draws on original source material in Persian, Russian, and modern and Ottoman Turkish to proffer a new explanation for the re-establishment of monarchy in Iran in 1921. Nejad’s second book project connects the defeats of the socialist left and insurgences of political Islam in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and Chechnya from 1973 to 2001.
At OU, Nejad teaches on modern Iranian history, contemporary and historical Iran-U.S. relations, modern European history, and the global history of communism. His articles have appeared or are forthcoming in Slavic Review, Iranian Studies, Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, and Middle Eastern Studies. Nejad serves as the History Book Review Editor for Iranian Studies, and has coedited an anthology, The Caspian World: Connections and Contentions at a Modern Eurasian Crossroads (Cornell University Press, forthcoming 2025). He is an ardent supporter of orangutan conservation efforts and the great ape personhood movement.
