Dr Marral Shamshiri

I am a historian of the modern Middle East and its global connections, interested in the transnational histories and possible futures of radical and anticolonial movements, internationalist traditions, and revolutionary mobilisation in the 1960s and 1970s. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the Digital Archive of the Middle East (DAME) project at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter.
 
My doctoral thesis was a study of the transnationalism forged between the Iranian new left and the two major Arab anticolonial revolutions of the 1960-70s: the Palestinian revolution (1965-82) and the Dhufar revolution (1965-76) in Oman. Tracing the clandestine journeys, exile activism and transnational encounters of Iranian students, activists and revolutionaries across and beyond the Arab world – from Aden, Baghdad, Beirut, Damascus and Tripoli to Vienna, Paris, London and Washington – I restored a foreclosed history of the universalist ties of emancipation forged between Iran’s forgotten leftist revolutionaries and Arab anticolonial revolutions. In doing so, I sought to recover the unrealised potential and possibility in this ultimately defeated past. I passed my PhD viva with no corrections in March 2026 in the Department of International History at LSE.

I discuss some of my ideas in this recent article in History Workshop digital magazine (2026). I have published parts of this research project in journal articles, book chapters, and other creative outputs, which you can find here.

I am interested in imaginative and collaborative approaches to public history. I am managing editor and former editorial fellow of History Workshop (2024-26), a digital magazine of radical history, and co-editor of the book She Who Struggles: Revolutionary Women Who Shaped the World (Pluto Press, 2023). I am also part of the research collective Revolutionary Papers.