Academic interests
Alisa Shablovskaia is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo, focusing her research on the conceptual history of shura (consultation) within the modern Turco-Persian world. Her project investigates the rich interplay between Iranian conceptual frameworks and their Ottoman counterparts, emphasizing the significant roles of Sufi networks, the enduring impact of premodern Islamic literary genres, and the complexities of entangled Iranian and Ottoman modernities.
A key component of her research is an exploration of the shura concept through the lens of the history of emotions in Iran, extending from the 19th to the 21st century. This approach integrates classical, decolonial, and gender perspectives, offering a nuanced understanding of how emotional landscapes shape and are shaped by political discourse.
Additionally, Alisa's current inquiry delves into the conceptualization of democracy across various Iranian literary traditions. She examines Qajar "mirrors for princes", early Persian translations of Marxist writings as well as contemporary Iranian and diaspora literature.
Background
Alisa's scholarship deals with the history of Irano-Russian and Irano-Ottoman relations, Iranian communism, late Qajar intellectual history and the connected history of Russian, Turkish and Iranian concepts. Her book manuscript, Subversive Clients: The End of Russian Imperialism in Iran, 1912-1918, analyzes the center-periphery dynamics in the imperial context and highlights the role of local agencies in the imperial crisis and collapse. She received her PhD in Oriental Languages and Civilizations from Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle University in 2021. Her research has been supported by the Université Sorbonne Paris-Cité "Double Culture" Research Fellowship, the French Institute of Iranian Studies (Tehran) Traveling Fellowship, the French Institute of Anatolian Studies, the French Institute of Central Asian Studies, and the Paris Center of Iranian Studies (CNRS). Alisa has also taught a series of courses on the history of international relations, geopolitics and Islamic civilizations at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po) between 2018 and 2023.
Positions held
- Teaching Fellow at Sciences Po Le Havre (2021-2023)
- Research and Teaching Assistant at the Paris Institute of Polititcal Studies (2019-2020)
- Doctoral Researcher at the Paris Center of Iranian Studies-CeRMI, CNRS (2016-2021)
Tags:
Iran,
Middle East,
Conceptual History,
International Relations,
Turkey,
Central Asia
Publications
“Recasting Shūrā: Advisory Literature and Sufi Ethics in Qajar Iran,” Journal of Islamic Studies, forthcoming.
“From Tyranny to Absolutism: Chrono-Spatial and Religious Concepts in Two Persian Translations of the Communist Manifesto,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, published 6 January 2026, doi:10.1017/S0020743825101323.
“Between Paternalism and Orientalism: Ottoman Diplomacy and the Iranian Constitutional Movement,” Iranian Studies, published 29 September 2025, doi:10.1017/irn.2025.10111.
“Constitutionalism and the Political Ethos of the Last Qajars,” in Denis Hermann and Erdal Kaynar (eds.), Histories of Constitutionalism in the Ottoman and Qajar Empires, 1830-1914, (Leiden: Brill [Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East and Asia], 2025), 235-256.
“‘The Persian Gate to Revolution’: Bolshevik Networks and Post-WWI Revolutionary Transnationalism in Iran,” in Abbas Amanat et al. (eds.), The Caspian World: Connections and Contentions at Modern Eurasian Crossroads (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2025), 309-325.
“Iran at the Paris Peace Conference: International Diplomacy and the Pursuit of Imperial Nationalism by Philip Grobien (London/New York/Oxford/New Delhi/Sydney: I.B. Tauris, 2023), p. 215,” Iranian Studies, January 2025, https://doi.org/10.1017/irn.2024.50.
“Iranian-Saudi Rivalry since 1979: In the Words of Kings and Clerics par Talal Mohammad,” Studia Iranica, Vol. 52, n° 2 (2023), 309-313.
“‘Islam says that we are all equal’: The Islamic Turn in Soviet Propaganda in Iran, 1921-1925,” Iranian Studies, Vol. 55, n° 4 (2022), 973-992, doi:10.1017/irn.2021.25.
“Le défi de l’indépendance : Arménie (1919-1920) by Rouben Ter Minassian and Taline Ter Minassian,” Ab Imperio, n° 3 (2022), 323-332.
“Les ‘bons sauvages’ au service de l’Empire: les Kurdes dans l’imaginaire russe à l’époque de la Première Guerre mondiale, 1914-1917,” Études kurdes, n° 14 (2021), 97-117.
“From the Kur to the Aras: A Military History of Russia’s Move into the South Caucasus and the First Russo-Iranian War, 1804-1813 par George A. Bournourian,” Studia Iranica, Vol 50, n° 1 (2021), 149-153.
(together with Étienne Forestier-Peyrat) “Freedom on the Fence: The Caucasian Borderlands and Boundaries of Revolution,” in Sabin Dullin et al. (eds.), The Russian Revolution in Asia: From Baku to Batavia (New York/London: Routledge [Routledge Studies in Global History], 2021), 70-87.
“Treacherous Friends or Disenchanted Masters? Russian Diplomacy and Muhammad ‘Ali (Shah) Qajar, 1911-1912,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 48, n° 4 (2021), 611-28, doi:10.1080/13530194.2019.1683717.
“Islamic Law and Society in Iran: A Social History of Qajar Tehran par Nobuaki Kondo,” Studia Iranica, Vol. 49, n° 1 (2020), 151-55.
“Russian Hubris in Iran: Imperialism, Orientalism and Ottoman Obsession of the Russian Diplomacy, 1907-1911,” Ab Imperio, n° 1 (2019), 79-103, doi:10.1353/imp.2019.0007.
Published
Oct. 16, 2023 12:40 PM
- Last modified
Feb. 6, 2026 11:32 AM
