Lindsey Stephenson received her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. Her dissertation, “Rerouting the Persian Gulf: the Transnationalization of Iranian Migrant Networks, c1900–1940” won the Association for Gulf and Arabian Peninsula Studies (AGAPS) Best Dissertation Award. 

Stephenson is a historian of the Middle East and Western Indian Ocean. Broadly, her work focuses on Iranians and the transformation of Gulf society in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Her work brings together untold histories across the South of Iran and draws them into a broader Indian Ocean narrative. Thematically, her work is located at the intersection of law, geography and material culture.

While at Princeton, she will be working on her first book manuscript, “Oceanic Mobilities and the Iranian Everyday in the 20th-century Persian Gulf.” Her work explores the role of Iranian mobility in the formation of conceptions of citizenship and territory in the region. From governmental archives to private family collections, her work draws from a wide range of Persian, Arabic, and English language sources.

She is particularly invested in public scholarship and is currently the host and co-producer of the Indian Ocean Series podcast with the Ajam Media Collective. Lindsey is often involved in local Gulf conversations on the preservation of architectural heritage. Her research has been published in the Journal for Arabian Humanities, Journal of Arabian Studies, Foreign Policy Online and Jadaliyya, among others.