Dr. Nahid Siamdoust is the inaugural Ehsan Yarshater Fellow at Yale University’s Program in Iranian Studies at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. She is a cultural historian whose work concentrates primarily on the intersection between politics and various modes of cultural production and media forms in Iran and the wider Middle East, with a critical focus on questions of cultural mediation, political power and social mobilization. Her book, Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2017) was based on her award-winning doctoral dissertation at Oxford University. Siamdoust holds a B.A. in Political Science and Art History, and a Master of International Affairs from Barnard College and Columbia University, respectively. Prior to her doctorate, she worked as a full-time Iran and Middle East based journalist for TIME Magazine, Der Spiegel and Al Jazeera English TV.
 

High Praise for Soundtrack of the Revolution: The Politics of Music in Iran (Stanford University Press, 2017):

"Music is the language of liberation. Nahid Siamdoust, who knows all the players and has taken personal risks to tell this story, has written a lovely tribute to the courage and creativity of Iran's musicians. This is a book that, like Iran itself, is filled with hope and sadness and the universal human desire for freedom." 
—Joe Klein, Time Magazine

"Nahid Siamdoust's Soundtrack of the Revolution is a ground-breaking study of a potent cultural register in post-revolutionary Iran. For both the casual reader and the aficionado, Siamdoust's pioneering insights are revelatory." 
—Hamid Dabashi, Columbia University