Achaemenid Workshops
The Achaemenid Workshops (AchWorks) are a series of international conferences that endeavor to revisit, reassess, and reformulate (the state of) Achaemenid scholarship.
About
Coordinated by the Pourdavoud Institute in conjunction with AchWorks’ Organizing Board, a dozen workshops will be hosted over the coming years at leading institutions of ancient studies around the globe. The workshops aspire to become an intellectual hub for Achaemenid studies, while affording an institutional framework to foster the next generation of scholars working on the Achaemenid world.
This is particularly important at the present juncture, when the manifold fields of ancient studies are undergoing profound changes and multiple voices reporting on the ancient worlds are emerging with ever more vigor and independence. Thus, at a time when new research structures, such as Global Antiquity (UCLA), have been instituted, or grand initiatives, such as the Classical World in Context (Getty), are being conducted, the Achaemenid world empire would also have pedagogic and heuristic value for the comparative study of the ancient worlds.
Organizing Board
Schedule of Events
AchWorks 1
2023 (April 12–14, 2023): “Identity, Alterity, and the Imperial Impress in the Achaemenid World,” organized by M. Rahim Shayegan at UCLA.
AchWorks 2
2023 (July 3–7, 2023): “The Achaemenid Persian Empire and Imperial Transformations in the Ancient Near East,” organized by Robert Rollinger at the University of Innsbruck.
AchWorks 3
2025 (February 21–22, 2025): “Towards a Literary History of the Achaemenid Empire,” organized by John Ma, Marc van de Mieroop, and M. Rahim Shayegan at Columbia University.
AchWorks 4
2026 (October 19–23, 2026): “The Achaemenid-Persian Empire and its Western Borderlands: A Change of Paradigm,” organized by Robert Rollinger, Julian Degen, Erich Kistler, Bernhard Palme, Florian Schwarz at the University of Innsbruck. AchWorks 4 is organized in conjunction with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Kommission: Transformation Processes and Empire in the Ancient Afro-Eurasian Worlds.
AchWorks 5
2027 (September 20–25, 2027): “The Achaemenid Empire as a Transcontinental Engine of Trade and Entanglement,” organized by Kai Ruffing at the University of Kassel. AchWorks 5 is organized in conjunction with the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Kommission: Transformation Processes and Empire in the Ancient Afro-Eurasian Worlds.
AchWorks 6
2027 (November 2027): “Social History of the Achaemenid Empire: Imperial and Local Societies in Interaction,” organized by Hilmar Klinkott at Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel.
AchWorks 7
2028 (Fall 2028): “Hellenistic Revisited,” organized by M. Rahim Shayegan at UCLA.
AchWorks 8
2029 (Winter 2029): “Central Asia and the Longue Durée,” organized by Rolf Strootman at Utrecht University.
AchWorks 9
2030 (Fall 2030): “Teaching the Achaemenid Empire,” organized by Elspeth Dusinberre at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Publications & Responsibilities
A dedicated series is in the process of being created. The series would be edited by M. Rahim Shayegan and Robert Rollinger, but the organizers of each workshop are the volume’s editors.
The Pourdavoud Institute serves as the organizing hub for the workshops, and also assists with some common logistics, as well as assumes the creation of a common website, and is responsible for the videography of the workshops to be posted on the common and individual websites.
The organization of the individual workshops is left in the hands of the hosting institutions, but the Pourdavoud Institute can assist in this. The Pourdavoud Institute may also assist with a limited subvention to defray the expenses associated with the publication of the volume, should the need arise.
In general, we would welcome the participation of advanced graduate students as speakers, chairs, and participants at these events.