Dr. Evangelos Venetis was born in 1977 in Athens, Greece. He is currently a Senior Research Associate in Islamic and Iranian studies at the School of Asian, African and Amerindian Studies, the University of Leiden, the Netherlands. He received his first degree in history (1999) and an MA in history from the University of Ioannina, Greece. He holds a PhD in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies from the Department of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies, the University of Edinburgh, UK (2006). His research interests deal with the Islamic world, the Shiite Islam, the Iranian world and the Greek diaspora in the Middle East. Venetis’s publications include books and articles on various aspects of modern and pre-modern Middle Eastern Studies, including his recently completed monograph on the History of Hellenism in Modern Iran (19^th – 21^st c.) which is in print.