Elvire Corboz earned her D.Phil in Oriental Studies from the University of Oxford in 2010. She also holds a BA & MA in Musicology and Arabic studies from the University of Geneva and an M.Phil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from Oxford. Before joining Aarhus University, she was Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and lecturer at Rutgers University. She was also the recipient of an Iranian Studies Visiting Fellowship at the Sorbonne Nouvelle and the UMR Mondes iranien et indien in Paris.

Elvire’s research concentrates on contemporary Shi‘i Islam, in particular its transnational dynamics. Her doctoral dissertation, which was jointly awarded the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies Leigh Douglas Memorial Prize (2011), explored the transnational constitution of clerical authority through the lens of prominent families of religious scholars. Her publications on this topic include her monograph Guardians of Shi‘ism: Sacred Authority and Transnational Family Networks (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming in 2014). Her current research examines the question of state-sponsored religious transnationalism with a study of Iran’s connections to Muslim communities in Europe. Alongside this, Elvire is also at work on the transnational history of the Iranian revolution.