Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute would like to congratulate Candace Mixon, the first recipient of Roshan Institute Fellowship for Excellence in Persian Studies, established at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2013. Ms. Mixon, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Religious Studies, is currently working on her dissertation entitled “Representations of Public Piety in Persian Images and Texts” in which she examines the linguistic, cultural, and religious contexts that inform public piety and the family of the Prophet Muhammad in contemporary Iran. She will use Roshan Institute Fellowship to continue her Ph.D. research during summer 2014.

Roshan Institute would also like to commend Ms. Mixon as well as all other graduate students pursuing excellent Ph.D. work in Persian Studies at UNC. Their research areas range from Persian poetry and literature to Sufism and Shi’ism.