Mehrdad Kia is Professor of History and Director of Central and Southwest Asian Studies at the University of Montana. He focusses on the history of the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa and on the civilizational history of Islam. He received his PhD in 1986 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Kia also holds interests in the intellectual history of 19th-century and early 20th-century Iran, the Ottoman Empire and the South Caucasus. Kia was born and raised in Iran and moved to the United States aged 17.