ProfessorShahram Akbarzadeh

Dr Shahram Akbarzadeh is Professor of Middle East and Central Asian Politics

Director: Middle East Studies Forum (www.mesf.au)

He held the prestigious ARC Future Fellowship between 2013-2016, and was named Australia’s Field Leader in Middle East and Islamic Studies (The Australian Research Report 2019). He has also received the Elie and Sylvia Kedourie Prize for the outstanding article in Middle Eastern Studies (2020), Deakin University’s Research Leadership Award (2019), the Alfred Deakin Institute Award of Excellence for HDR Supervisor of the Year (2023), and the Deakin University Faculty of Arts and Education International Partnership and Engagement Excellence Award (2023).

He has an active research interest in the politics of the Middle East and Central Asia, religion in foreign policy, Islam, Muslims in Australia, and authoritarianism. He has been involved in organising a number of key conferences, including a Chatham House rule workshop on Australia’s relations with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan (2007), sponsored by the International Centre of Excellence for Asia Pacific Studies, a conference on the Arab Revolutions in collaboration with Freedom House (2012), Iran in the World: Opportunities and Challenges (2014), Future of the Middle East (2016), Trump and the Middle East (2018), The Islamic Republic of Iran at 40 (2019), The Middle East in Transition (2022), and The Middle East After the War on Gaza (2024).

In 2000 Professor Akbarzadeh was the Middle East Studies conference convener and served as the Central and West Asia Councillor for the Asian Studies Association of Australia (1999-2004). He has promoted Asian studies through contacts with industry and academia by research and publication. He guest edited a special issue of Asian Studies Review on Central and West Asia (Vol. 25, No. 2, 2001) and a special issue of the Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies on Globalisation and the Middle East (Vol. 5, No. 2, 1999). He was also founding director of the Centre for Muslim Minorities and Islam Policy Studies at Monash University, Deputy Director of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, and served in senior leadership roles at Deakin University, including Deputy Director (International) and Acting Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation.

He has published more than 70 refereed journal articles and a substantial body of scholarly books and edited volumes. Among his publications are Uzbekistan and the United States,  Presidential Elections in Iran, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East, The Politics and International Relations of the Middle East: Crisis Zone, and Muslim Active Citizenship in the West, as well as major field-defining collections including the Edward Elgar Handbook of Middle East Politics, the Routledge Handbook of International Relations in the Middle East, and the Routledge Handbook of Political Islam.

Professor Akbarzadeh was the founding editor of the Islamic Studies Series, published by Melbourne University Press, and is a regular public commentator. He has produced key reports for the Australian Research Council (ARC) on Australian-based scholarship on Islam, for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) on Muslim Voices and Mapping Employment and Education, and on Islam in the Australian media. He acted as Convenor of the Islam Node for the ARC Asia Pacific Futures Research Network. He is Academic Editor of Third World Quarterly, founding editor of Studies in Iranian Politics with Palgrave Macmillan, and a member of the editorial boards of Global Change, Peace & Security, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and the Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs. He was the founding President of the Australian Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (AAIMS) from 2016 to 2019. His research has attracted more than AU$15 million in external funding, including ARC, DFAT, Carnegie Corporation, Qatar National Research Fund, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, and Victorian Government support.