Excited to give the keynote for the Dante Futures conference tomorrow at Warwick, where I was a Leverhulme ECF. The interconnection between Medievalism and Orientalism is a new topic for me and I look forward to the conversations at the conference and beyond with Dantists & scholars of Orientalism.

We are on! Alexander’s Feast staets now live on @bbcradio3bot.bsky.social
I’ll be doing the interval commentary at 8.30pm, telling more about Achaemenid Persia, the burning of Persepolis and its Western retellings.

Very excited to see the BBC Proms programme released today and to share that I'll be returning this year as an interval commentator for the performance of Handel's 'Alexander's Feast' on 30/8/25!

I'll be talking Persepolis🔥 🏛️🔥 and operatic treatments of Persia 🎼 👑🗡️📯
www.bbc.co.uk/events/e8qbc....

In today's episode of Julia's deep dive into Italian Orientalism, Italo Pizzi (who was to become Italy's first Professor of Persian) writes in 1878 of the dejection of being thirty and having to rely on precarious teaching positions due to not having found permanent academic employment in his field.

After almost a decade of working on French Orientalism, I'm turning to Italian Orientalism. Today's two highlights from De Gubernatis, founding father of Italian Oriental Studies:
1) he brags about Renan blowing him a kiss at a conference
2) proudly declares his right to research everything he loves

As it’s that time of year, here is a throwback to a Nowruz (Persian New Year) special of BBC Radio’s 3 Thinking that I recorded last year in excellent company: Michelle Assay, Susan Babaie and our own @UofGlasgow Ide Haghi.

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

The challenge of teaching Mary Renault's The Persian Boy is... fighting back the tears before class 😭❤️

Off to Liverpool to give a talk on my current book project! If you are in town it's tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1pm at 7 Abercromby Square, Seminar Room 6, hosted by
@saraharens.bsky.social as part of the Languages, Cultures and Film Departmental Seminar Series.