Dr Peyvand Firouzeh
Peyvand Firouzeh is Lecturer in Islamic Art in the Department of Art History, and an Australian Research Council DECRA fellow (2023-2026). She is a trained architect and art historian specializing in medieval and early modern art and architecture from the Islamic world, with research interests in material cultures of Sufism, the interaction of image, space, and text, Indian Ocean studies, and the mobility of artistic and intellectual networks within and beyond the Persianate world. Her book manuscript, provisionally titled Intimacies of Global Sufism: The Arts of Shrine Making Between Early Modern Iran and India, addresses the relationship between mysticism, materiality, and mobility. Focusing on a series of hitherto understudied sacred sites in Iran and India, the book uses the concept of “intimacy” to redraw the boundaries between small devotional spaces and monumental structures, as well as between local and global histories of faith and art making. Peyvand is currently working on two new projects: the first, for which she has received a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council, focuses on the circulation of images and perceptions of the built environment in fifteenth-century Deccan India that materialized temporal and geographical dialogues across the Indian Ocean. The second project, for which she received a Getty Scholar Grant (2022-23), explores the real and imagined migrations of the coco-de-mer nutshell, native to the islands of Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, with a focus on their use as Sufis’ begging bowls.
- Art and architecture of the Islamic world, especially medieval and early modern periods
- Indian Ocean studies
- Islamic mysticism and its relationship to material culture
- Artistic exchange between Iran and India
- Interconnections between art, politics and religion in the Islamic world
- ARHT3678 Islamic Visual Cultures, China to Spain
- ARHT2680 Why Art Matters
- ARHT3678 Text, Image, Sound: Islamic Book Arts
- ARHT5000 Presenting Visual and Cultural Research
- ARHT6961 Curating Islamic Art in 10 Objects
Peyvand welcomes honours and graduate students interested in any aspect of Islamic art, architecture, and materials cultures.
- Monograph under contract: Intimacies of Global Sufism: The Arts of Shrine Making Between Early Modern Iran and India
- Monograph in preparation: Art, Migration, and State-Building: India in the Indian Ocean World
- Research project: Coco-de-Mer, Mysticism, and Material Histories of the Indian Ocean World
- 2023-2026: Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA), Australian Research Council
- 2022: University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor's Awards: Outstanding Early Career Teaching
- 2022-2023: Getty Scholar Grant, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
- 2019: Bahari Visiting Fellowship in the Persian Arts of the Book, the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
- 2018-2019: Getty/ACLS Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Art History, The Getty Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies
- 2018: Willison Foundation Trust Award in Book History
- 2016-2017: Visiting fellowship, Association for the Study of Persianate Societies and H. K. Sherwani Centre for Deccan Studies at Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad
- 2016: CAA – Getty International Program Grant
- 2015: The Gibb Memorial Trust Annual Fellowship
| Project title | Research student |
|---|---|
| The biographies of Persian rugs: Assessing cultural diversity in Australian museums | Shima GHOLAMI |
Publications
Book Chapters
- Firouzeh, P. (2023). Mahmud Shihab al-Din Bahmani. In Kate Fleet, Gudrun Kramer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (pp. 61-65). Leiden and Boston: Brill. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2021). Sufi lodge: zawiya, khanaqah, tekke. In Alexandre Papas (Eds.), Handbook of Sufi Studies: Sufi Institutions, (pp. 157-173). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2020). Between the Spiritual and Material: The Ni'mat'ullahi Order's Institutionalisation and Architectural Patronage in the 9th/15th Century. In Denis Herman, Mathieu Terrier (Eds.), Shi'i Islam and Sufism: Classical Views and Modern Perspectives 18657, (pp. 123-156). London: Bloomsbury. [More Information]
Journals
- Firouzeh, P. (2020). Beyond Centre and Periphery: Islamic Art in Sydney. TAASA Review, 29(3), 7-8. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2019). Book review: 'Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New studies in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal art and culture', by Kishwar Rizvi (ed.) Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World, vol. 9. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2017. CAA Reviews. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2019). Convention and Reinvention: The British Library Shahnama of 1438 (Or. 1403). Iran, 57(1), 49-70. [More Information]
Other
- Firouzeh, P. (2019), Rustam: The Hero with Red Hair. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2013), Shushtar: A Town to Tame Water.
2023
- Firouzeh, P. (2023). Mahmud Shihab al-Din Bahmani. In Kate Fleet, Gudrun Kramer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas and Everett Rowson (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE, (pp. 61-65). Leiden and Boston: Brill. [More Information]
2021
- Firouzeh, P. (2021). Sufi lodge: zawiya, khanaqah, tekke. In Alexandre Papas (Eds.), Handbook of Sufi Studies: Sufi Institutions, (pp. 157-173). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. [More Information]
2020
- Firouzeh, P. (2020). Between the Spiritual and Material: The Ni'mat'ullahi Order's Institutionalisation and Architectural Patronage in the 9th/15th Century. In Denis Herman, Mathieu Terrier (Eds.), Shi'i Islam and Sufism: Classical Views and Modern Perspectives 18657, (pp. 123-156). London: Bloomsbury. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2020). Beyond Centre and Periphery: Islamic Art in Sydney. TAASA Review, 29(3), 7-8. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2020). Dynastic Self-fashioning and the Arts of the Pen: Sufi and calligraphy networks between fifteenth-century Shiraz and Bidar. In Keelan Overton (Eds.), Iran and the Deccan: Persianate Art, Culture, and Talent in Circulation, 1400-1700, (pp. 145-174). Bloomington, IN, United States: Indiana University Press. [More Information]
2019
- Firouzeh, P. (2019). Book review: 'Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New studies in Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal art and culture', by Kishwar Rizvi (ed.) Arts and Archaeology of the Islamic World, vol. 9. Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers, 2017. CAA Reviews. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2019). Convention and Reinvention: The British Library Shahnama of 1438 (Or. 1403). Iran, 57(1), 49-70. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2019), Rustam: The Hero with Red Hair. [More Information]
2015
- Firouzeh, P. (2015). Al-Muqaddasi's Ahsan al-Taqasim fi Ma'rifat al-Aqalim and its contribution to the Study of Architectural History in the Tenth Century. In Anna Krasnowolska, Renata Rusek-Kowalska (Eds.), Studies on the Iranian World II: Medieval and Modern, (pp. 241-254). Krakow, Poland: Jagiellonian University Press.
- Firouzeh, P. (2015). Sacred Kingship in the Garden of Poetry; Ahmad Shah Bahmani's tomb in Bidar (India). South Asian Studies, 31(2), 187-214. [More Information]
2014
- Firouzeh, P., Rogers, S. (2014). Orientality: Cultural Orientalism and Mentality. International Journal of Islamic Architecture, 3(2), 541-547. [More Information]
2013
- Firouzeh, P. (2013). A Journey through Architecture and Manuscripts in the Deccan. Journal of the Iran Society, , 65-74. [More Information]
- Firouzeh, P. (2013), Shushtar: A Town to Tame Water.
2011
- Firouzeh, P. (2011). Narratives of Nasir Khusraw: on the history of the built environment in early medieval cities on the edge. North Street Review, 15, 89-98.
Selected Grants
2023
- Art, Migration, State-Building: India in the pre-modern Indian Ocean World, Firouzeh P, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA)
2022
- Coco-de-Mer, Mysticism, and Material Histories of the Indian Ocean World, Firouzeh P, Getty Foundation (USA)/Getty Scholar Grants
Other funded research
- 2022: SLAM Research Support Scheme, School of Literature, Art and Media, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney
- 2019: Engagement and Mobility Fund, School of Literature, Art and Media, University of Sydney
In the media
06/04/2023 - quoted in Getty News: There and Back Again