Dr Shabnam Holliday

Research interests

Shabnam is Associate Professor in International Relations. She joined the University of Plymouth on completing her PhD on discourses of Iranian national identity at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter. Her publications include Defining Iran: Politics of Resistance (Routledge, 2011) and the edited volume, with Phil Leech, Political Identities and Popular Uprisings in the Middle East (Rowman and Littlefield International, 2016).

In addition to her research on Iranian politics and international relations, Shabnam has been working on populism. This includes her article, Populism, the international and methodological nationalism: global order and the Iran-Israel nexus, Political Studies (2020), which puts forward a new framework for looking at populism in International Relations.

Shabnam has three areas of research interest: the relationship between domestic and international politics in relation to populism; the role of ideas in politics in the Global South; the construction of global order and its relationship with revolution and political transformation. These research interests are reflected in ongoing research projects: Iran and global order; and Iran and the international.

Shabnam is the current Director of the British Institute of Persia’s Modern Research Project. In addition to being on BIPS’ research committee, this involves two workshops on Iran and the International. The first focuses on the role of ideas and intellectual history. The second fovuses on Iran’s international relations.

Grants & contracts

• June 2007 British Institute of Persian Studies: 6 month Residential Post-doc in Tehran to research Iranian national identity
• June 2005 British Institute of Persian Studies Research Grant
• June 2005 Prince al-Waleed Award

Research groups

• Plymouth International Studies Centre