Abid Zaidi

abid zaidi
DPhil Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
St Antony's College
abid.zaidi@ames.ox.ac.uk

Abid Zaidi is a DPhil candidate in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at St Antony’s College. His research, tentatively titled: “Between Boroujerdi and Khomeini (1961–1979): Institutional developments in the Qom Seminary, and the transnational evolution of Shi’i revolutionary clerical activity”, focuses on the development of the Qom seminary in Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, and its role in organising, structuring, and supporting transnational revolutionary activities amongst the clergy in the lead up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978–79. He is supervised by Dr Maryam Alemzadeh (OSGA) and is the recipient of a Wolfson Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities, funded by the Wolfson Foundation.

Alongside this, Abid is interested in researching:

  • The general political, social, and economic history of Pahlavi Iran and the Islamic Republic;
  • Political, religious, and social histories of the Shi’a in the 20th/21st centuries, both in the Middle East and beyond;
  • Shi’a religious practice in diasporic communities in the West.

Abid received a Distinction in his MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford (St Antony’s College), and a First Class (with Honours) in his BSc in Political Science and Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Outside of his studies, Abid is an avid reader, long-distance runner in-training, and takes part in several student societies, serving as Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Middle East Review, and President of the Oxford University Ahlulbayt Islamic Society.

You can get in contact with him here: