The Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination will hold a Crisis Diplomacy lunch seminar, "The Future of the Iran Nuclear Deal, Syria, and the Wider Middle East," on Thursday, December 8, 2016, at 12:00 p.m. in 012 Bendheim Hall. Ali Ansari, Professor of Iranian History and Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, and Wolfgang Danspeckgruber, LISD Director, will lead the discussion. The lunch is open to Princeton University faculty and students only. To attend, RSVP to Angella Matheney.

Professor Ansari will available by appointment to meet with Princeton students and faculty on Thursday, December 8. To schedule an appointment, contact Angella Matheney. 

Ali Ansari is Professor of Iranian History and Director of the Institute for Iranian Studies at the University of St. Andrews, Associate Fellow of the Middle East Programme at the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), and Senior Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. His research interests include the development of the State in Iran in the modern era, with a particular focus on nationalism, mythology and the use (and abuse) of history. His recent research investigates the historiography of modern Iran, both the way in which historians have interpreted the development of Iranian state and society as well as the way in which Iranian historians have sought to construct a distinctly Iranian identity both in terms of their own history but also in relation to regional and international powers, most obviously the West. His research also focuses on the politics and history of the Islamic Republic and the broader relations of Britain and the United States with Iran. Ansari is the author of numerous books on Iran, including most recently Iran: The Politics of History (Cambridge, 2015), Iran: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2014), and The Politics of Nationalism in Modern Iran (Cambridge, 2012). He is editor of the Cambridge History of Iran, volume 8 (The Islamic Republic). Ansari is a non-resident associate of LISD.

Wolfgang Danspeckgruber is the Founding Director of the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination at Princeton University and has been teaching on issues of state, security, self-determination, and diplomacy at Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Department of Politics since 1988. He is also founder and chair of the Liechtenstein Colloquium on European and International Affairs, LCM, a private international diplomacy forum. Danspeckgruber researches, writes and teaches on the theory and practice of international diplomacy, private diplomacy, and crisis diplomacy; on leadership; on the European Union; on security and state building issues in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the wider Middle East; and on issues concerning religion and diplomacy. Since 2001 he has frequently visited Afghanistan, China, Russia and several other states in Central Asia and the Caucasus; Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and states in the Middle East; and has been involved in related private diplomacy. During the 1990s, Danspeckgruber participated in private diplomacy in Southeastern Europe and the Caucasus, and has also worked with the Ahtisaari Team and the EU Special Representative on the status of Kosovo. His fact-finding missions lead into Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Yugoslavia/Serbia and Turkey. From 2008 to 2010 during Austria's Membership in the United Nations Security Council he served as advisor to the Permanent Mission of Austria to the United Nations. He also has advised the Permanent Mission of the Principality of Liechtenstein to the United Nations. He is currently an advisor to the Austrian chairmanship of the OSCE.