Dr Firuza Melville is a graduate (hons.) of St Petersburg University, where she received her PhD in Persian Literature, Art and Islamic Studies, and taught until 2005.
She left St Petersburg as an Associate Professor for Oxford where she was teaching Persian literature at the Faculty of Oriental Studies. Dr Melville was also a Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford where she was Tutor, Supervisor and Director of Studies for all undergraduate and graduate students reading Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Egyptian, Armenian, and Syriac, as well as Curator of the Ferdawsi Library and the Persian manuscript collection.
In 2010 she moved to Cambridge as Iran Heritage Foundation Research Fellow at Pembroke College. Since 2013 she is Director of Research of the Cambridge Shahnameh Centre for Persian Studies. She has been AMES Director of Studies in Pembroke College, Peterhouse and Corpus Christi.
Research Interests:
Dr Melville's research interests include mediaeval Persian book art, Persian literature, contemporary Iranian art, Russian cultural Orientalism in Central Asia and the Caucasus, especially in opera and ballet, and the history of Russo-Persian diplomacy of the early Qajar period.