Biennial Yarshater Lecture Series- Ancient Iran and Central Asia: Interactions and Shifting Identities with Frantz Grenet

The Yarshater Center for the Study of Iranian Literary Traditions and the Pourdavoud Institute for the Study of the Iranian World are delighted to welcome Frantz Grenet (Collège de France) in March to deliver the four-part Biennial Yarshater Lecture Series on the theme, “Ancient Iran and Central Asia: Interactions and Shifting Identities.”

Lectures
Wednesday, March 4: “A World between Worlds: Geography, History, and Identity of The Kušāns (First to Third Centuries CE)”
Friday, March 6: “The Kušāns: In Search of an Imperial Discourse”
Monday, March 9: “Eastern Iranian Contributions to the Construction of the Shāhnāme: Kushano-Sasanians, Sistānis, and Sogdians (Fourth to Eighth Centuries CE”
Wednesday, March 11: “Philhellenism among the Hunnic Elites (Fifth to Seventh Century CE)”
Further lecture details and abstracts are forthcoming.

About the Speaker
Frantz Grenet has been since 2013 a Professor at the Collège de France and currently holds the chair of History and Cultures of Pre-Islamic and Central Asia.Focusing on history and archaeology of Central Asia and the history of Zoroastrianism as his main fields of research, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure, Paris (1972–1977). From 1977 to 1981, he was Deputy-director of the French Archaeological Delegation in Afghanistan, with participation to the excavations at Ai Khanum under the directorship of Paul Bernard, and from 1981 to 2013 he was a Research Fellow at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris. Professor Grenet serves as Director of the French-Uzbek Archaeological Mission in Sogdiana (1989–2014, then since 2021), working mainly at Samarkand. Before taking up his position at the Collège de France, he was Professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Etudes (Paris) in 1999–2014, holding the chair of Religions of the Ancient Iranian World.Professor Grenet is a Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres (inducted 2022), a Member of the American Philosophical Society (joined 2017), a Fellow of the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (member of the Advisory Board 2013–2017), and a Board Member of the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum. He is also an honorary citizen of Samarkand (naturalized 2018). Professor Grenet served as the President of the scientific committee of the exhibition Splendeurs des Oasis d’Ouzbékistan (Louvre, 23 November 2022 – 6 March 2023).His main publications include: Les pratiques funéraires dans l’Asie centrale sédentaire de la conquête grecque à l’islamisation, Paris, 1984; A History of Zoroastrianism, III: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman rule, Leiden, 1991 (with Mary Boyce); La geste d’Ardashir fils de Pâbak, Die, 2003; The golden journey to Samarkand [selected articles translated in Chinese], Guilin, 2017. He has most recently collaborated with Nicholas Sims-Williams on The “Ancient Letters” and other Early Sogdian documents and inscriptions, 2023, and Bactrian Documents IV, 2025. He has produced seven edited or co-edited collective volumes and about 200 articles in referenced journals, published in French, English, Russian, Persian, Chinese, and Japanese.