Shervin FARRIDNEJAD

Teaching Fellow

 

 

 

 

 

 



Shervin Farridnejad is a Teaching Fellow at the Department of Religious Studies. In 2018, he co-ordinates a course on "Zarathustra und seine Religion: Die zoroastrische Tradition und Rituale vom alten Iran bis zum modernen Indien" [Zoroaster and his Religion: The Zoroastrian Tradition and Rituals from Ancient Iran Up to Modern India]. He studied Ancient and Middle Iranian Philology and Zoroastrian Studies in which he received his Ph.D. in 2014 with a thesis on "Die Sprache der Bilder: Eine Studie zur ikonographischen Exegese der anthropomorphen Götterbilder" [The Language of Images: A Study on Iconographic Exegesis of the Anthropomorphic Divine Images in Zoroastrianism] from the Institute of the Iranian Studies, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, in which he investigated the perception, significance, and representation of Zoroastrian anthropomorphic deities in ancient Iranian religious imagery in light of both material and written sources. He also holds an M.A. in Iranian Studies, Visual Arts, and Art History from Tarbiat Modares University Tehran (2006), and a B.A. in Fine Arts and Art History from Tehran University (2002). His specialties comprise cultural and religious history of Zoroastrianism and Iranian Jewry from late antiquity, through the early Islamic era up to the present. His current research interests include the rituals and religious iconography, connections and exchanges between the ancient, early modern and contemporary Zoroastrian and Jewish rituals and practices, the history of late antique Zoroastrianism and Iranian Jewry, as well as the transmission of knowledge in the Ancient Near East. His research also stresses Zoroastrian and Judeo-Persian religious literature in both ancient and early modern time. Since July 2015, he is involved in the project "Religious Authority in Zoroastrianism and the Question of Succession: Textual Authority Versus Priestly Authority" within the framework of the research group The Personal Authorization of Knowledge in Ancient Succession Narratives in the excellence cluster 264 – Topoi (The Formation and Transformation of Space and Knowledge in Ancient Civilizations). Since September 2016, he is working at the Institute for Iranian Studies (IFA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) in Vienna as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Over the past years he has been variously teaching at the Institute of Religious Studies, as well as at the Institute of Iranian Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. He is also editor of the peer-reviewed journal DABIR (Digital Archive of Brief Notes & Iran Review), member of the research group "Sasanika: Late Antique Near East" (University of California, Irvine), member of the research group "Corpus Avesticum for a new edition of the Avesta" (CoAv), and member of the research group "Avestan of Digital Archive" (ADA).