This episode of Voices of IIS features Dr Gurdofarid Miskinzoda. Dr Miskinzoda is one of the co-heads of the Department of Education at The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS). Originally from Tajikistan, she is an alumna of the Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities (GPISH). In this warm and reflective conversation, she traces a path from a village garden in 1991 to a research and teaching career in London.
Dr Miskinzoda first heard of IIS as a schoolgirl. Visitors spoke about IIS at a gathering in her village in June 1991. Her father, a teacher of Persian literature, decided there and then that she would study Arabic. He passed away a few months later. A civil war, a contested scholarship, and a four-hour interview at a Moscow airport followed.
The conversation then turns to her work. Dr Miskinzoda explains why Shiʿi studies long sat on the margins of the field. She describes how IIS built the Shiʿi Heritage Series across the whole Shiʿi tradition, rather than around one grouping. She also reflects on what she wants her students to carry into the world, and on the alumni now serving communities worldwide. The episode closes on the reason she cannot separate her scholarship from her life.
Topics discussed in this episode
- A village gathering in Tajikistan, and a father’s decision
- Civil war, Khorog, and a scholarship the committee almost refused
- The teachers in Moscow who shaped her
- Finding the sīra as a way into Islamic history
- Why Shiʿi studies sat on the margins of the field
- The Shiʿi Heritage Series, and the debate over the title
- What students should take from Shiʿi history and thought
- Academic rigour and the lived faith of communities
- Alumni, impact, and 50 years of IIS
- Scholarship and personal life, and why the two do not separate
