Dr. Shiva Balaghi is a cultural historian specializing in the visual culture of the Middle East and its diasporas. She is Academic Coordinator of the Area Global Initiative at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She previously served as Senior Advisor to the President of the American University in Cairo for Arts and Cultural Programs and taught History and History of Art at NYU and Brown University for nearly two decades. Balaghi has written widely on Iranian art, including essays for the Guggenheim, the Warhol Museum, the Hood Museum at Dartmouth, and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Her writing has also appeared in Artforum, Ibraaz, Hyperallergic, MERIP, and Iranian Studies. Her books include Picturing Iran: Art, Society and Revolution (co-edited), Parviz Tanavoli (co-edited), Reconstructing Gender in the Middle East (co-edited), and Saddam Hussein: A Biography. Balaghi has curated over a dozen art exhibitions in museums and galleries in the US, Europe, and the Middle East, most recently “A Boundless Drop to a Boundless Ocean” an exhibit of Iranian and Arab diaspora artists at the Orlando Museum of Art and the American University in Cairo in 2021.