1979 Revolution

As a new set of public documents was released under the thirty year rule, further archival work was conducted on the tense relations between Britain and Iran that centred on the role of the BBC Persian Service in covering the oppositional activities that eventually toppled the Shah in the 1979 Revolution.

In March 2010, a Witness Seminar on The BBC and the 1979 Iranian Revolution was held at SOAS. It brought together journalists, diplomats and analysts to remember and narrate the role of the BBC in the revolution, while the afternoon was spent analysing the current role of BBCPTV in the 2009 'Green Movement'.

Project contact:

Professor Annabelle Sreberny, SOAS, University of London, a.sreberny@soas.ac.uk, 020 7898 4422

Project members:

Prof Annabelle Sreberny is the Director of the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS and coordinator of Diasporic Nationhood. She spent seven weeks in Tehran in autumn 2008. She has conducted interviews about the use of BBC WS and other external broadcasting channels.

Dr Massoumeh Torfeh is a former BBC World Service senior producer, now a Research Associate at the Centre for Media and Film Studies, SOAS. She has worked on histories of BBC Persian and Pashto language services, and on papers released in January 2009 that relate to the BBC and the Iranian Revolution.