Mahbod Ghaffari is a Bye-Fellow at Fitzwilliam College and the Director of Studies in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies for Fitzwilliam College. He is responsible for the academic progress of students at Fitzwilliam College and is involved in the admissions process and interview applicants that wish to read Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Tripos at Fitzwilliam College, University of Cambridge.

Dr Ghaffari is an Associate Professor in Persian Language, Linguistics and Culture at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at University of Cambridge and Persian Year Abroad Coordinator at the Department of Middle Eastern Studies. Dr Ghaffari teaches undergraduate Persian language and Linguistics, Introduction to the Contemporary Middle East: Languages and Literatures of the Modern Middle East, and Iranian Cinema at FAMES. 

Background:

Dr Ghaffari studied Translation for his BA and got his master degree in Teaching Persian and his PhD in Linguistics in Iran. He got a certificate in “Leadership in Higher Education” from the University of Oxford and did a 6 month intensive course on Iranian Culture and Civilization, Iranian and Islamic Architecture, Anthropology, Archaeology, and History of Iran.

When he was 26, Mahbod started teaching linguistics, methodology, translation studies, Persian language and culture, etc in Iran. This continued for several years in the University of Allameh Tabatabaei and Shahid Beheshti University before moving to the UK. He continued working and researching on Persian Language and was Persian Examiner for the University of Westminster before joining the Department of Middle Eastern Studies in the University of Cambridge in 2013.

After finishing his recent project on teaching Persian online (to make it easier for anybody interested in learning this language and accessing the website from anywhere in the world), Mahbod is now working on Cambridge-Belgrade Persian Learner Corpus (CAMBEL), two books on Persian Grammar and Persian for Business and a dictionary.

Research interests: 

Persian Language and Culture, Classical and Modern Persian Literature, Persian Linguistics, General Linguistics, Multimedia and Interactive Online Teaching, Iranian Studies.

Dr Ghaffari has organised Biennial Conferences on Teaching Persian Language and Literature at University of Cambridge since 2017. He has a long-standing collaboration with world-wide eminent scholars, universities, research organisations and academic journals in the field of Persian studies.

Publications:

Dr Ghaffari has published the best seller series for teaching Persian language named Fārsi bīyāmuzīm (Let's Learn Persian). A list of his publications can be accessed here (https://www.ames.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.ames.cam.ac.uk/files/list_of_publications_0.pdf)