Professor Nacim Pak Shiraz

Professor of Cinema and Iran

Biography

Background

Nacim Pak-Shiraz is Professor of Cinema and Iran, specialising in Iranian cinema, visual culture, gender and religion. After a B.A. in Tehran, she completed a graduate programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities at the Institute of Ismaili Studies, London, followed by an M.A. in the Anthropology of Media and a PhD in Film and Media at SOAS, University of London.

She teaches across film, literature, Islamic studies and gender, bringing research-led insights into the classroom to help students engage critically with global visual and literary traditions. She has developed innovative interdisciplinary courses that connect the arts, humanities and contemporary social questions. Her research contributes to international scholarship on film, religion and visual culture, and she supervises doctoral students working on film, religion, Middle Eastern literature and wider cultural studies. She has been invited to give research talks at academic and cultural institutions internationally and has appeared as an expert commentator on the BBC and STV. Through her research, teaching and public engagement, she aims to expand our understanding of culture, belief and social change.

CV

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Responsibilities & affiliations

 

Professor Pak-Shiraz has previoulsy served as the Head of Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies (2017-2021),  MSc Programme Director and Departmental PG Director. 

She is currently the Departmental Director of Research.

She is a currently a governor at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) (since 2021) as well as at the Institute of Ismaili Studies (since 2020). 

Professor Pak-Shiraz has also curated a number of film festivals in Edinburgh, and has been as a jury member and speaker at several international film festivals in the Czech Republic, Turkey, Kenya, and Iran.

 

 

 

Film Studies, University of Edinburgh

Undergraduate teaching

  • Gender and Visual Representations 
  • Cinema and Society in the Middle East
  • Of Wine, Love and Loss: Reading Iran through Classical Persian Literature 
  • Modern Persian Literature
  • Islam Through the Art

Postgraduate teaching

  • Research Methods and Practice
  • History and Culture of Iran
  • Ruling Iran

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

  • Iranian and Middle Eastern cinema and visual culture, including aesthetics, narrative, and the intersections of politics, religion and society in visual and material representation.
  • Religion, ritual and representation in Middle Eastern culture, exploring how belief, identity and cultural memory are articulated through film, television, literature and visual culture.
  • Gender, sexuality and embodiment in film, visual culture and literature, with particular interest in Middle Eastern, diasporic and transnational contexts.
  • Classical and modern Middle Eastern literature, with particular interest in Persian literary traditions.

Current PhD students supervised

PhD Supervision - Principle Advisor:    

  • Jazaa Khaled, IMES PhD 

 

PhD Supervision - Second Advisor:

  • Nurul Alfiah Kurniawati

 

Past PhD students supervised

 Principle Advisor:

  1. Lovisa Berg,  'Creating a Man, a Mouse or a Monster?: Masculinity as Formulated by Syrian Female Novelists through the Second Half of the 20th Century', IMES PhD.  Completed 2017
  2. Alessandro Coloumbu, 'Modernity and Gender Representation in the Short Stories of Zakariyyā Tāmir: Collapse of the Totalising Discourse of Modernity and the Evolution of Gender roles', IMES PhD.  Completed 2017
  3. Zeynep Merve Uygun, 'Unveiling through Documentary: The Making and Imagining of Space Among Veiled Women in Contemporary Turkey',   Transdisciplinary Documentary Film PhD. Completed 2019
  4. Farshid Kazemi, '(Un)veiling Desire and Sexuality in Iranian Cinema, IMES PhD. Completed 2019
  5. Ameerah Saleh Alshehri, 'The Marvellous Real in the Middle East: A Comparative Study of Magical Realism in Contemporary Women’s Fiction', IMES PhD. Completed 2021.
  6. Eleanor Lucy Deacon, ' Retelling Karbala: A Literary Analysis of Key Plays of the IranianTaʿziyeh Repertoire', IMES PhD. Completed 2022.
  7. Farah Taleb, Reshaping Narratives: Women Artists from the Middle East and North Africa in Western Museums, IMES PhD.  Completed 2024
  8. Erin Robbins, Vision of Modernity: Religion and Mysticsim in the Poetry of Adonis, IMES PhD. Completed  2024

  9. Bahar Fayeghi, Everyday Resistance of Afghan Women in Iran,  IMES PhD. Completed 2025

Second Supervision:

10. Michael Munnik, 'Points of Contact: A Qualitative Fieldwork Study of the Relationship between Journalists and Muslim Sources in Glasgow', IMES PhD. Completed 2015.

11. Peter Cherry, 'British Muslim Masculinities in Transcultural Fiction and Film (1985 – 2012)', Comparative Literature PhD.  Completed 2017.

Research summary

Professor Pak-Shiraz's research interests are in the arts and cultures of the Middle East and Muslim societies, particularly the visual arts.

She is  interested in film’s engagement with religion and spirituality, representations and constructions of gender in visual culture, the Iranian performing arts and religion, contemporary expressions of Islam in art and material culture, and Persian literature.

Current research interests

Visual Culture Middle Eastern Cinema Film, religion and spirituality Iranian performing arts and religion Politics and cinema Gender and commercial cinema Representations of gender in film Masculinity in Iranian cinema Religious epics Persian literature

Past research interests

Nacim Pak-Shiraz’s research examines Iranian and Middle Eastern cinema with a particular focus on gender, masculinity, power and cultural memory. Her work explores how film and television frame social debates, from patriarchal control and freedom of movement to populism, propaganda and the policing of moral boundaries. She has written extensively on the representation of religion on screen, including depictions of the Prophet Muhammad, Shi‘i ritual and sacred history in Iranian cinema. She also investigates parody, adaptation and the reworking of global genres in Iranian film, alongside broader questions of urban space, diaspora and cultural identity. Across these strands, she is interested in how visual media articulate belief, authority and social change in contemporary Middle Eastern societies.

Knowledge exchange

Nacim Pak-Shiraz’s knowledge-exchange work has significantly shaped public understanding of Iranian culture in Scotland and internationally. Her REF case study, Establishing Scotland as a Centre for Understanding Iran through its Cinema, drew on more than eighty curated film events, including seven Edinburgh Iranian Film Festival seasons and collaborations with the Edinburgh International Film Festival and Hippodrome Silent Film Festival. She regularly engages diverse audiences through invited talks, public lectures and panel discussions on topics such as gender, protest, religion and social change in Iran, including events with the Scottish Parliament’s Festival of Politics, the Edinburgh Radical Book Fair, the Inter-Faith Association, and BBC Radio Scotland. Her public conversations with filmmakers, post-screening discussions, and school and community outreach have broadened access to rigorous, research-informed perspectives on Iranian cinema and the wider Middle East. Through this sustained programme of activity, she has helped create a vibrant, informed space for dialogue between academic research, the arts and the public.

Project activity

She is currently working on a number of research projects, chiefly the constructions of masculinities in Iranian cinema from its early pre-Revolutionary era down to the present day. She is also undertaking research on religious epics, with a particular focus on Qur’anic films.

Conference details

Select Conference Presentations

2023 (Sep). ‘Exploring Populist Discourse in Aghazadeh: Unveiling the Role of Television Series as Propaganda’, Commission of Anthropology of the Middle East

Institut Français d’Ếtudes Anatoliennes (IFEA), Istanbul, Turkey.

2016 (Aug). ‘Shooting the Isolation and Marginality of Masculinities in Iran’, Association for Iranian Studies. University of Vienna.

2016 (Jul). ‘Isolation and Marginality in Iranian Cinema’, Constructing Masculinities in the Middle East Symposium. University of Edinburgh.

2015 (Oct). ‘Representing Muhammad on Screen’, Montgomery Watt Symposium: Representations of Muhammad. University of Edinburgh.

2014 (Oct) ‘Masculinity, Love, and Fear in Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema’ ‘The Visual World of Persianate Culture’. University of Edinburgh

2014 (Aug). ‘Constructions of Masculinity in Iranian Cinema’. Tenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference. Montreal.

2013 (Jan). ‘Depicting the Diaspora in Iranian Comedies’. Persian Civilisation Seminar Series. Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Edinburgh.

2012 (Aug). ‘Comedy in Iranian Cinema’. Ninth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference. Istanbul.

2009 (Jun). ‘Cinema as a Reservoir for Cultural Memory’. Thirty Years On: The Social and Cultural Impacts of the Iranian Revolution. School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

2006 (Aug). ‘My Priest the Hero: The Clergy in Iranian Cinema’. Sixth Biennial Conference of Iranian Studies. SOAS, University of London.

2005 (May). ‘Religion and Spirituality in Kiarostami’s Films’. Abbas Kiarostami: Image, Voice and Vision. Victoria & Albert Museum and Iran Heritage Foundation (IHF), London.

2004 (May). ‘Religious Themes in Iranian Cinema’. Fifth Biennial Conference of Iranian Studies. Bethesda, MD.

2004 (Jul). ‘Iranian Cinema and the Islamic State’. The 17th Annual Screen Conference. University of Glasgow.

Invited speaker

International Invited Keynotes, Talks and Lectures 

2022 (Nov), Violence against Women’s Transgression in Iranian Cinema, University of Utrecht. Netherlands.

2022 (Apr). ‘Yesterday’s Heroes, Today’s Villains: Guarding the Ideals of the Revolution in Aghazadeh’, University of Bamberg, Germany.

2021 (Nov). ‘Modified (Hu)Man: Traditions, Vulnerabilities and Possible Futures – Roundtable’, Iran at the Crossways: Documentaries and Dialogues on a Changing Society, University of Hamburg, Germany. 

2021 (Apr). ‘Women Depicting Freedom of Movement in Iranian Cinema’. Cinema and Women Poets. University of Toronto, Canada.

2020 (Oct). ‘Cinema, Sacred History and the State’. Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin, Germany.

2018 (May). ‘Women Behind and on the Camera in Iranian Cinema’. Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), to launch ground-breaking exhibition In the Fields of Empty Days: The Intersection of Past and Present in Iranian Art. Los Angeles, U.S.

2017 (Nov). ‘Iranian Cinema Today – An Ode to the Past and New Directions to the Future’, 7th Biennial Hamad bin Khalifa Symposium on Islamic Art, Islamic Art: Past, Present and Future? University of Virginia,  U.S.

2017 (May). ‘Continuities and Discontinuities in Iranian Cinema’, Anadolu University, Turkey.

2017 (Apr). ‘Theoretical Approaches to the Study of Religion and Film’. University of Cinema and Theatre, Tehran, Iran.

2017 (Apr). ‘Moving Beyond Euro-centric Films in Academia’. Fajr International Film Festival (FIFF), Tehran, Iran.

2017 (Feb). ‘The Qur’anic Epic in Iranian Cinema. Indonesian Consortium for Religious Studies (ICRS) University, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

2015 (Sep). ‘Warrior Masculinities in Iranian Cinema’. 8th European Conference of Iranian Studies. State Hermitage Museum and Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russia.

2015 (Jul). ‘Constructing Masculinities in Iranian Cinema’. University of Freiburg, Germany.

2015 (May). ‘The Qur’anic Film in Iranian Cinema’. International Conference on Religion and Film, University of Nebraska and Turkish Department of Cultural and Social Affairs, Istanbul, Turkey.

2015 (Feb). ‘Changing Men’s Dress in Early 20th Century Iran’,  Contemporary Iranian Fashion, National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, Scotland.

2014 (Aug). Plenary. ‘Careers in Iranian Studies: Mentoring Lunch for Graduate Students’. Tenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference, International Society for Iranian Studies (ISIS), Montreal, Canada.

2014 (Mar). ‘Constructing Masculinities through the Javanmards in Iranian Cinema’. Ahilik and Javanmardi Conference. British Institute of Persian Studies (BIPS) and Ipek University, Ankara, Turkey.

2012 (Sep). Keynote address. ‘Imagining the Diaspora in Iranian Cinema: The “Farangi” in Comedies’. 20th Reza Ali Khazeni Memorial Lecture in Iranian Studies. University of Utah, Salt Lake City, U.S.

2012 (Sep). ‘Truth, Lies and Justice: The Fragmented Picture in Asghar Farhadi’s Films’. Reza Ali Khazeni Memorial Foundation, and the College of Humanities, Tanner Humanities Center and Middle East Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, U.S.

2007 (Aug). ‘The Role and Power of the Shi‘i Clergy in Iran’. IIS Summer Programme on Islam, McGill University and The Institute of Ismaili Studies Montreal, Canada.

2007 (Aug). Invited talk on The Day I Became a Woman. IIS Summer Programme on Islam, McGill University and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Montreal, Canada.

National Invited Keynotes, Talks and Lectures 

2026 (Jan) ‘Constructions of Masculinities in 1990s Commercial Cinema’ Oxford University, St Antony’s College.

2024 (Sep) ‘Freedom of Movement: A Cinematic Analysis of Gender and Space in Iranian Culture’, The Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities’,  University of Edinburgh 

2023 (Oct). ‘Exploring Gender and Space in Iranian Cinema’, Centre for Arts, Media & Culture, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland.

2022 (May). ‘The Right to Move: Gender and Space in Iranian Cinema’, Oxford University, St Antony’s College.

2021 (Oct).  ‘Women in Iranian Cinema’. Iran Society, London.

2019 (Feb). Roundtable, Iran’s Revolution 40 Years On: Politics and Culture in the Islamic Republic, University of Edinburgh.

2015 (Feb). ‘Trends in the Constructions of Masculinities in Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema’. University of Manchester.

2013 (Sep). ‘The Divine Word on the Screen: Religious Epics in Iranian Cinema’. Contemporary Approaches to the Qur’an in Iran Conference. The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London.

2011 (Nov). ‘Religion and Cinema in Iran’. Seminar on Religion and Cinema. The School of Critical Studies, University of Glasgow.

2011 (Jul). Talk on No-one Knows about the Persian Cats. International Summer Programme on Expressions of Diversity: A Contemporary Introduction to Muslim Cultures. Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, Aga Khan University, London.

2011 (May). ‘Exploring the Overlooked Diversity of Bahram Beyzaie’s Filmmaking Styles’. Music in Middle Eastern Cinema. City University London & Institute of Musical Research, London.

2010 (Jun). ‘Ta‘ziyeh and the Films of Bahram Beyzaie’. Mythologizing the Transition: A Symposium on Bahram Beyzaie’s Cinema and Theatre. University College London.

2009 (Jul). Invited talk on The Circle. IIS Summer Programme on Islam. University of Cambridge and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Cambridge.

2009 (Mar). ‘Cinema as a Reservoir for Cultural Memory’. People of the Prophet’s House: Art, Architecture and Shi‘ism in the Islamic World. British Museum and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, London.

2008 (Jul). Talk on The Day I Became a Woman. IIS Summer Programme on Islam. University of Cambridge and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Cambridge.

2005 (Aug). Talk on Ten. IIS Summer Programme on Islam. University of Cambridge and The Institute of Ismaili Studies, Cambridge.

Organiser

The Visual World of Persianate Culture - An International Conference hosted at the University of Edinburgh, 24-26th October 2014 - Co- organiser  

Constructing Masculinities in the Middle East -  An International Symposium , 9-11th July 2016 - Co-organiser 

 

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