Dr Ashkan Sepahvand

I studied undergraduate Art History at Vassar College (Poughkeepsie, NY) before moving to Berlin, Germany in 2006. Since then, I have been practicing professionally as an artist, writer, editor, translator, and curator, with a track record of regular, international exhibitions. I've held major institutional roles at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt and the Schwules Museum. In 2012, I completed a Master's degree in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought at the European Graduate School (Saas-Fee, Switzerland). As a member of St. John's College and the Ruskin School of Art, I received my DPhil in Fine Art from Oxford in 2025.

Teaching

I am committed to articulating and developing multidisciplinary, practice-driven methodologies that together constitute "artistic research" as its own proper field. As a result, my pedagogy encourages performative, psychoanalytical, somatic, and poetic approaches to the subject of study. I have taught courses on queer theory and performance studies, decolonising the museum, postcolonial theory, and diaspora aesthetics. I have also held numerous workshops based on movement research, embodied writing, experimental choreography, and translation as artistic practice. I have research expertise in contemporary art history and theory from West Asia and its diasporas, Iranian theatre and performance traditions, Persianate masculinities, and the semiotics of Iranian mythology, ritual, and folklore.

My work explores the relationship between words and bodies, text and movement, the archive and the repertoire. I seek to articulate a diaspora aesthetics between "queer" and "Iranian". I am interested in words, names, and figures that invoke alterity, eroticism, and carnality, specifically questioning how these might translate between English and Persian. My inquiry goes beyond language; rather, I am interested in how the association between different, even contradictory cultural contexts makes unexpected materials and gestures available to diasporic art practice.

My postdoctoral research focuses on an archive from WW2 Iran in the Bodleian Libraries. The archive contains the unpublished manuscript of an epic romance by Ali Mirdrekvandi, an Iranian peasant employed by the British and American occupying forces, written in so-called "broken English." My project will develop methods and formats for "rehearsing" this archive with others, inviting artists and academics from the Iranian diaspora to converse, collaborate, and perform its materials together.

Recent Publications

“Hellishes on Earth,” Ibraaz Journal, ed. Stephanie Bailey, (online: forthcoming October 2025)

"White Capitalist Patriarchy––Informatics of Domination", Informatics of Domination, eds. Zach Blas, Melody Jue, Jennifer Rhee, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2025)

“Translating Odarodle,” Ambivalent Works: Queer Perspectives and Art History, eds. Daniel Berndt, Susanne Huber, Fiona McGovern, (Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 2024)

“Everything I know about technocapitalism, I learned at Berghain,” Chronologies of Creamcake, ed. Steph Kretowicz (Berlin: Distanz Verlag, 2024)

“History into Mystery,” Research Diary, Qalqalah, ed. Virginie Bobin, September 2022, online: https://qalqalah.org/en/research-diaries/history-into-mystery

Awards and Distinctions

The Clarendon Fund (Scholarship Holder, 2019-2024)
AHRC Open-Oxford-Cambridge Doctoral Training Programme (2019-2024)
The Cultural Programme, Oxford Humanities (Project Funding 2023-24)