Biographies
Ali Abidi is a polo player and coach at Santa Maria Polo Club and has coached and played professionally since 1976 mainly in the UK, Spain and Argentina. During this period he coached at several clubs including Guards Polo Club, Royal Berkshire Polo Club, and Ascot Park Polo Club. Since 2015, when he returned to Iran polo scene, he has been head of coaching and umpiring committee of the Iran Polo Federation and has organized coaching and umpiring seminars and classes. He has also participated in several tournaments, both as a player and umpire, playing at various clubs in Tehran.
Mansour Bahrami is regarded as one of the most naturally gifted tennis players to ever pick up a tennis racket and is one of the sport’s greatest entertainers. A self-taught tennis player, he has been competing as a full-time professional player in the West since he was 30, compiling a 2-10 record in doubles finals. In 1989 he played the Roland Garros doubles final with Eric Winogradsky.
Houchang Chehabi is Professor of International Relations and History at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. He received his PhD in political science in 1986 and taught at Harvard University for eight years before joining Boston in 1998. He has been a visiting professor at UCLA and the University of St Andrews, a visiting fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and a visiting researcher at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. He has also been the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship.
He is the author of Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism (1990), principal author of Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (2006), and the editor or co-editor of ten books, most recently (with Grace Neville) Erin and Iran: Cultural Encounters between the Irish and the Iranians (2015). He has published over fifty articles, including ten on Iranian sports history.
Shirin Gerami became the first female to represent Iran in triathlons at the World Championships in 2013. Since then she has continued competing for Iran in various triathlon races, including the Ironman World Championships in October 2016.
Kia Joorabchian is a football agent and advises football players on their rights, and clubs on transfers and contracts. He is also involved in the ‘third-party’ ownership of players, describing himself as an investment manager. In October 2008, he said, “I manage the investment group and obviously when the investment group is profitable, as fund manager, you also get a cut”. In 2009 it was reported that the unnamed investors represented by Joorabchian were understood to own the economic rights to 60 or 70 players across Europe and South America.
Mehdi Mahdavikia is a retired Iranian football player who played for Persepolis, Hamburger SV, Eintracht Frankfurt, Steel Azin, Damash Gilan, and also the Iran national team. He won the Asian Young Footballer of the Year award in 1997, as well as Asian Footballer of the Year in 2003. He was captain of the Iran national team from 2006 to 2009, and currently is the fourth most-capped Iranian international player after Ali Daei, Javad Nekounam and Ali Karimi. From the Bank Melli Youth Academy, he joined Persepolis and after his performance in the 1998 FIFA World Cup was transferred to Hamburger SV in the Bundesliga, where he played for eight seasons. He usually played as a right winger or full-back. He was known for his crossing, speed and dribbling. He announced his retirement on 14 March 2013 from football world. His last match as a football player was against Sepahan in the Hazfi Cup final on 5 May 2013.
Charles Melville is Professor of Persian History at Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College. He completed his PhD at Cambridge on ‘The historical seismicity of Iran from the 7th to the 17th centuries’ in 1978 and has been teaching there since 1984. He has served for many years on the Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies (of which he is currently vice-president); he is currently director of the Cambridge Shahnama Project; President of the Islamic Manuscript Association; and vice-chairman of the Iran Heritage Foundation’s Academic Committee.
Professor Melville’s main research interests are in the history and culture of Iran in the Mongol to Safavid periods, and the illustration of Persian manuscripts. He is the author, editor and co-editor of numerous publications especially on Safavid Persia and Shahnama Studies. His more recent publications include Persian Historiography (2012); Every Inch a King: Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (2013, with Lynette Mitchell); ‘The horrors of war and the arts of peace: Images of battle in Persian manuscripts’, in Kurt Franz & Wolfgang Holzwarth, Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period, 2015; and The Mongols’ Middle East (2016, with Bruno De Nicola). He is currently researching the illustration of history in medieval manuscripts.
Mahyar Monshipour is an Iranian-born French boxer who was the World Boxing Association’s super bantamweight champion for nearly three years between 2003 and 2006. He lost his belt to Thai boxer Somsak Sithchatchawal on 18 May 2006, in a match that won The Ring Fight of the Year and Harry Markson Awards, the latter the prize for ‘fight of the year’ awarded by the Boxing Writers Association of America. He was Deputy Director of the Sports Department of the General Council of Vienna between 2006 and 2011 and the national adviser of the Ministy of Health, Youth and Sports in 2011. He has been decorated with the National Order of Merit for both his sporting and social success.
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis is the Curator of Middle Eastern Coins at the British Museum since 2005. She obtained her MA in Near Eastern Archaeology and Ancient Iranian Languages at the University of Göttingen in Germany and her PhD from University College London on Parthian art.
She has successfully completed a joint collaborative project with the National Museum of Iran on Sasanian Coins of AD 224-651, which resulted in the publication of two volumes in 2010 and 2012. Together with Dr Michael Alram in Vienna, she is the Joint Director of the International Parthian Coin Project and is currently preparing the publication of Coins of Mithradates (Mehrdad) II in this series.
She has published extensively on ancient Persian coins, art and culture and is particularly interested in religious and royal iconography and contributed to a series of major and minor exhibitions on Iran at the British Museum. She is a member of the Academic Committee of the Iran Heritage Foundation, and Honorary Director of the British Institute of Persian Studies.
Litta Sohi was born in Masjid Soluman to an Iranian father and a Danish mother and spent her first 8 years living in Tehran. She then moved from Tehran to Denmark, where she discovered her passion for riding. She later lived for several years in Rome, where she competed in show jumping before converting to dressage. She has now been riding competitively for about 15 years, competing in dressage at international level for 5 years, representing her birth country of Iran. She is based in the UK and often competes across Europe with her two horses: Davino and Air. Her goals are to qualify for the next World Equestrian Games in North California in 2018, the Asian Games in Indonesia also in 2018, and of course the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020.
Mansour Bahrami is regarded as one of the most naturally gifted tennis players to ever pick up a tennis racket and is one of the sport’s greatest entertainers. A self-taught tennis player, he has been competing as a full-time professional player in the West since he was 30, compiling a 2-10 record in doubles finals. In 1989 he played the Roland Garros doubles final with Eric Winogradsky.
Houchang Chehabi is Professor of International Relations and History at the Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University. He received his PhD in political science in 1986 and taught at Harvard University for eight years before joining Boston in 1998. He has been a visiting professor at UCLA and the University of St Andrews, a visiting fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, and a visiting researcher at Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge. He has also been the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship.
He is the author of Iranian Politics and Religious Modernism (1990), principal author of Distant Relations: Iran and Lebanon in the Last 500 Years (2006), and the editor or co-editor of ten books, most recently (with Grace Neville) Erin and Iran: Cultural Encounters between the Irish and the Iranians (2015). He has published over fifty articles, including ten on Iranian sports history.
Shirin Gerami became the first female to represent Iran in triathlons at the World Championships in 2013. Since then she has continued competing for Iran in various triathlon races, including the Ironman World Championships in October 2016.
Kia Joorabchian is a football agent and advises football players on their rights, and clubs on transfers and contracts. He is also involved in the ‘third-party’ ownership of players, describing himself as an investment manager. In October 2008, he said, “I manage the investment group and obviously when the investment group is profitable, as fund manager, you also get a cut”. In 2009 it was reported that the unnamed investors represented by Joorabchian were understood to own the economic rights to 60 or 70 players across Europe and South America.
Mehdi Mahdavikia is a retired Iranian football player who played for Persepolis, Hamburger SV, Eintracht Frankfurt, Steel Azin, Damash Gilan, and also the Iran national team. He won the Asian Young Footballer of the Year award in 1997, as well as Asian Footballer of the Year in 2003. He was captain of the Iran national team from 2006 to 2009, and currently is the fourth most-capped Iranian international player after Ali Daei, Javad Nekounam and Ali Karimi. From the Bank Melli Youth Academy, he joined Persepolis and after his performance in the 1998 FIFA World Cup was transferred to Hamburger SV in the Bundesliga, where he played for eight seasons. He usually played as a right winger or full-back. He was known for his crossing, speed and dribbling. He announced his retirement on 14 March 2013 from football world. His last match as a football player was against Sepahan in the Hazfi Cup final on 5 May 2013.
Charles Melville is Professor of Persian History at Cambridge and Fellow of Pembroke College. He completed his PhD at Cambridge on ‘The historical seismicity of Iran from the 7th to the 17th centuries’ in 1978 and has been teaching there since 1984. He has served for many years on the Council of the British Institute of Persian Studies (of which he is currently vice-president); he is currently director of the Cambridge Shahnama Project; President of the Islamic Manuscript Association; and vice-chairman of the Iran Heritage Foundation’s Academic Committee.
Professor Melville’s main research interests are in the history and culture of Iran in the Mongol to Safavid periods, and the illustration of Persian manuscripts. He is the author, editor and co-editor of numerous publications especially on Safavid Persia and Shahnama Studies. His more recent publications include Persian Historiography (2012); Every Inch a King: Kings and Kingship in the Ancient and Medieval Worlds (2013, with Lynette Mitchell); ‘The horrors of war and the arts of peace: Images of battle in Persian manuscripts’, in Kurt Franz & Wolfgang Holzwarth, Nomad Military Power in Iran and Adjacent Areas in the Islamic Period, 2015; and The Mongols’ Middle East (2016, with Bruno De Nicola). He is currently researching the illustration of history in medieval manuscripts.
Mahyar Monshipour is an Iranian-born French boxer who was the World Boxing Association’s super bantamweight champion for nearly three years between 2003 and 2006. He lost his belt to Thai boxer Somsak Sithchatchawal on 18 May 2006, in a match that won The Ring Fight of the Year and Harry Markson Awards, the latter the prize for ‘fight of the year’ awarded by the Boxing Writers Association of America. He was Deputy Director of the Sports Department of the General Council of Vienna between 2006 and 2011 and the national adviser of the Ministy of Health, Youth and Sports in 2011. He has been decorated with the National Order of Merit for both his sporting and social success.
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis is the Curator of Middle Eastern Coins at the British Museum since 2005. She obtained her MA in Near Eastern Archaeology and Ancient Iranian Languages at the University of Göttingen in Germany and her PhD from University College London on Parthian art.
She has successfully completed a joint collaborative project with the National Museum of Iran on Sasanian Coins of AD 224-651, which resulted in the publication of two volumes in 2010 and 2012. Together with Dr Michael Alram in Vienna, she is the Joint Director of the International Parthian Coin Project and is currently preparing the publication of Coins of Mithradates (Mehrdad) II in this series.
She has published extensively on ancient Persian coins, art and culture and is particularly interested in religious and royal iconography and contributed to a series of major and minor exhibitions on Iran at the British Museum. She is a member of the Academic Committee of the Iran Heritage Foundation, and Honorary Director of the British Institute of Persian Studies.
Litta Sohi was born in Masjid Soluman to an Iranian father and a Danish mother and spent her first 8 years living in Tehran. She then moved from Tehran to Denmark, where she discovered her passion for riding. She later lived for several years in Rome, where she competed in show jumping before converting to dressage. She has now been riding competitively for about 15 years, competing in dressage at international level for 5 years, representing her birth country of Iran. She is based in the UK and often competes across Europe with her two horses: Davino and Air. Her goals are to qualify for the next World Equestrian Games in North California in 2018, the Asian Games in Indonesia also in 2018, and of course the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020.
