Dr Farniyaz Zaker

BA (University of Tehran); MA (University of Southampton); DPhil (University of Oxford)

In 2015, I completed my DPhil in Fine Art at the University of Oxford with the support of St John’s College’s Lamb and Flag Graduate Scholarship. During and after my doctorate, I taught at the Ruskin School of Art and the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. In 2017, I was a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Asian and African Studies at the Higher School of Economics in St Petersburg. In 2018, I was a Visiting Research Fellow at UCL’s Institute of Advanced Studies and a Junior Teaching Fellow in the Ashmolean Museum’s Karsis Fellowship Programme. Since 2018, I have been a Lecturer in Persian Studies at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford.

I am a Tutor in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Christ Church. 

Both my research and art practice predominantly explore the relationship between architectural space, textiles, and the body in modern and contemporary Iran.

Zaker, Farniyaz. ‘Facile Contemporariness: Modernist Architecture and Dress Reform in Early Pahlavi Iran’. (forthcoming).

Zaker, Farniyaz. ‘Between Ornament and Structure: Carpets in Modern Art and Architecture’. Textile Museum Journal, vol. 51 (November 2024).

Zaker, Farniyaz. ‘Jenseits: Place, Dwelling and Art Practice’. Oxford Artistic and Practice-Based Research Platform (OAR), no. 1 (2017).

Zaker, Farniyaz. ‘A Room Without Boundaries: Ai Weiwei at The Royal Academy of Arts’. Home Cultures, vol. 13, no. 2 (2016).

Motamedi Fraser, Mariam, and Farniyaz Zaker. ‘Words and Walls, Texts and Textiles’. Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 32, no. 3 (2015).