Sussan Babaie is Reader in Islamic and Persian arts at The Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London. Before joining The Courtauld in 2013, she taught at Smith College, the University of Michigan, and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. She has curated the exhibition 'Strolling in Isfahan' at the Sackler Museum of Harvard University, and installations of Islamic arts at Smith College and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. She is the author of 'Isfahan and Its Palaces: Statecraft, Shi‘ism and the Architecture of Conviviality in Early Modern Iran' (2008 and paperback 2018), and co-author and editor of several books including 'Iran After the Mongols' (2019), 'The Mercantile Effect: On Art and Exchange in the Islamicate World During the 17th and 18th Centuries' (2017), 'Honar: The Afkhami Collection of Modern and Contemporary Iranian Art' (2017), 'Persian Kingship and Architecture: Strategies of Power in Iran from the Achaemenids to the Pahlavis' (2014), 'Shirin Neshat' (2013), and 'Slaves of the Shah: New Elites of Safavid Iran' (2004, paperback 2018). Currently, she is working on a book about the intersections between visual and gustatory taste in early modern Iran. Babaie studied Graphic Design (BA, Tehran University), History of Renaissance Arts (MA, American University, Washington, DC), and History of Islamic Arts (PhD, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University). Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities (United States), the Fulbright (for Egypt and Syria) and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
