John Ghazvinian is an author, historian and former journalist, specializing in the history of US-Iran relations. His most recent book, America and Iran: A History from 1720 to the Present (Knopf, 2021) -- a comprehensive survey of the bilateral relationship, based on years of archival research in both countries -- was named by the New York Times as one of "100 Notable Books of 2021". He is also author of Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil (Harcourt, 2007), as well as coeditor of American and Muslim Worlds before 1900 (Bloomsbury, 2020). He has written for such publications as Newsweek, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, the Sunday Times and the Huffington Post, and has taught modern Middle East history at a number of colleges and universities in the Philadelphia area. He earned his doctorate in history at Oxford University, and was the recipient of a "Public Scholar" fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2016-2017, as well as a fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation's special initiative on Islam in 2009-2010.
John is passionate about public scholarship, making expertise accessible, and helping academics become more comfortable writing for general audiences. He is founding director of Scholars to Storytellers -- an initiative aimed at coaching senior scholars to reach wider readerships for their work.