- Name:
- Mr Mattin Biglari
- Email address:
- mb125@soas.ac.uk
- Address:
- SOAS University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 312
- Academic Support Hours:
- 2-4pm on Thursdays
- Thesis title:
- Refining Knowledge: Expertise, Power and Labour in the Iranian Oil Industry, 1939-73
- Year of Study:
- 3
Biography
Teaching H102 - 'History of the World'
PhD Research
In my PhD thesis I examine knowledge production in the Iranian oil industry between 1939 and 1973. In particular, I focus on the town of Abadan and the various micro-experiences in two of its most important centres of expertise: the Refinery and the Technical Institute. I highlight the different actors bounded up in the daily production of expertise, including workers, engineers, managers, technologies and oil itself, situating experiences here within both a national and global framework.
Publications
- ‘‘A State of Tribal Lawlessness?’ Rural and Urban Crime in Fārs Province, 1910-1915’, in Dangerous Classes in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. Stephanie Cronin (forthcoming, 2018).
- “Captive to the Demonology of the Iranian Mobs”: U.S. Foreign Policy and Perceptions of Shi’a Islam During the Iranian Revolution, 1978-79', Diplomatic History 40, 4 (Sept., 2016): 579-605.
- ‘Abadan in the National Press During the Oil Nationalisation Movement, 1946-51’, Abadan: Retold, 2016.
Conferences
- ‘Making Workers Invisible: The Production and Representation of Expertise in the Abadan Refinery and Beyond, 1939-53’, Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, Washington D.C., November 2017.
- ‘Refining Knowledge: Expertise, Power and Labour in the Iranian Oil Industry, 1939-73’, University of Cambridge, World History Workshop, 15 November 2017.
- ‘The Iranian Oil Nationalisation Movement and the Politics of Expertise: Public Opinion, Technocracy and Global Oil Knowledge, 1946-51’, British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES) Annual Conference, University of Edinburgh, July 2017.
- ‘A State of Tribal Lawlessness?’ Rural and Urban Crime in Fārs Province, 1910-1915’, Conference: ‘The Dangerous Classes in the Middle East and North Africa’, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 26 January 2017.
- 'Cosmopolitan Nationalism and the Tudeh Party during the 1946 Khuzestan General Strike', Eleventh Biennial Iranian Studies Conference, University of Vienna, August 2016.
- ‘Communists, Contractors and ""Liquid Gold"": the politics of oil and the July 1946 general strike in Khuzestan’, LSE Contentious Politics Workshop, London, 24 March 2016.