Association for Iranian Studies (AIS)

The Association for Iranian Studies, Inc. (AIS), formerly The International Society for Iranian Studies, Inc. (previously The Society for Iranian Studies), was founded in 1967 as an academic society to support and promote the field of Iranian Studies at the international level.

Under its original name, the Society was incorporated in 1973 as a Type B Corporation under Section 201 of the Not-for-Profit Corporation Law of the State of New York. AIS, an affiliated member of the international Middle East Studies Association (MESA), is a private, not-for-profit, non-political organization of persons interested in Iranian Studies in the broadest sense. An elected council and an executive council run the affairs of the organization.

The objectives of the Society are to promote high standards of scholarship in the field, to encourage the teaching of Iranian Studies at the graduate and undergraduate levels, and to encourage and facilitate scholarly exchange amongst its international membership. Association for Iranian Studies publishes Iranian Studies, a journal that continues to serve as the principal journal in the field. Iranian Studies is a peer-reviewed journal of history, literature, culture, and society, covering all regions of the globe with a Persian or Iranian legacy, especially Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia, the Caucasus and northern India, as well as diaspora communities of Iranians in Europe and the United States.

As an independent, non-partisan, non-political, multi-disciplinary international community of over 500 scholars, students, academic and non-academic researchers, and aficionados of Iranian studies, AIS is committed to promoting the free exchange of ideas, freedom of expression in all forms and all media, and unrestricted pursuit of (academic and non-academic) research, instruction, publication, and presentation (in Iran and internationally) without fear of intimidation and persecution.

UCLA has an institutional membership under the UCLA Program of Iranian Studies.

The institutional membership benefits include:

• 10 complimentary conference registrations (for members whose individual AIS dues are up-to-date at time of conference registration)*
• Listing on the website as current institutional members
• Listing in the AIS conference program and conference website as conference sponsors
• Discounts on ads placed in Conference Program, Newsletter, and Journal
• Ability to submit news announcements to their newsletter

*For equity purposes, we intend to release a call for applications for UCLA affiliates who intend to present at a conference and would like to be considered for free conference registration.Should more than 10 people request institutional support, in advance of the conference registration deadline, we will collect titles and abstracts from accepted papers and create a committee of impartial UCLA faculty. The committee will adjudicate submissions in a blind review.More information on these details will be forthcoming based on conference call for application schedules.