Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute is delighted to share news about some of its Fellows and their recent accomplishments.
Dr. Neda Taherkhani joined Stony Brook Linguistics in Fall 2019 as the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Postdoctoral Fellow in Endangered Iranian Languages, to conduct a research on Southern Tati, under the supervision of Professor Richard Larson, former Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Stony Brook University. The fellowship, which carries a three-year term, is funded through a Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute grant that has been awarded to Professor Larson, to conduct research on endangered Iranian languages, with the aim to produce the first detailed grammar of a Caspian language in English. Dr. Taherkhani has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Purdue University with a specialization in Southern Tati, an undescribed language of Iran that is closely related to the three main Caspian languages: Talysh, Mazandarani and Gilaki.
Dr. Songül Gündoğdu is the recipient of the two-year Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Postdoctoral Fellowship in Iranian Linguistics, which is funded through a Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute grant awarded to Dr. Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, in support of his current research project on the syntax of nominal linkers across Iranian languages. Dr. Gündoğdu received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from Boğaziçi University in Turkey. Her main areas of research interest are morphosyntactic aspects of Iranian languages, such as the Ezafe constructions in Iranian languages, case and ergativity, argument structure and negation. Starting Fall 2019, she will assist Dr. Kahnemuyipour in understanding the syntax of linkers, starting with the Persian Ezafe, and thereby facilitate a deeper understanding of the structure of noun phrases and the architecture of grammar.
Elham Monfaredi successfully completed her Ph.D. in Second Language Studies from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, in August 2019. She was a recipient of the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies, which was granted to support her dissertation, entitled “Storytelling in Persian Language Classrooms: A Conversation Analytic Perspective,” in the academic year 2018-2019. Dr. Monfaredi plans to present findings from her doctoral study at the 2020 conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics that will be held in Denver, Colorado, on March 28-31, 2020.
Mojtaba Ebrahimian, a Ph.D. candidate in Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona, successfully defended his dissertation in a public oral defense on August 21, 2019, and will graduate upon completion of revisions requested by his dissertation committee, including his Advisor, Professor Kamran Talattof, Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Chair in Persian and Iranian Studies and Founding Chair of the Roshan Graduate Interdisciplinary Program in Persian and Iranian Studies at the UA. Mr. Ebrahimian’s dissertation, entitled “Nineteenth-Century Persian Travelogues of Europe and a New Understanding of Modern European Nations in Iranian Literary and Cultural Discourse,” is supported through the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies that was awarded to him in academic year 2018-2019.
Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute would like to commend all Fellows for their contributions to Persian Studies scholarship and wishes them continued success.