Homa Katouzian (Persian: همايون کاتوزیان; born Homayoun Katouzian on 17 November 1942) is an economist, historian, sociologist and literary critic, with a special interest in Iranian studies. Katouzian's formal academic training was in economics and the social sciences but he concurrently continued his studies of Persian history and literature at a professional academic level. He began studying the life and works of the modern Persian writer, Sadeq Hedayat, and that of the Prime Minister of Iran in the early 1950s, Mohammad Mosaddeq, while still a faculty member in the department of economics at the University of Kent at Canterbury. Having taught economics at universities in Britain and other countries for eighteen years, he took voluntary retirement in 1986 to devote his entire time to Iranian studies. In recent years, he has been teaching and writing on classical Persian literature, in particular the 13th-century poet and writer, Sa‘di. Currently based at the University of Oxford, Katouzian is a member of the Faculty of Oriental Studies and the Roshan Institute Academic Visitor in Iranian Studies at St. Antony's College, where for thirteen years he edited the bimonthly Iranian Studies, the journal of the Association for Iranian Studies. He is editor of the International Journal of Persian Literature, and co-editor of Routledge's Iranian studies book series. He is also a former member of the editorial board of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East and Comparative Economic Studies. Biography Katouzian was born in Tehran, Iran. After graduation from Alborz High School and a year at the University of Tehran, in 1961 he went to Britain to study economics. He received his bachelor's degree from the University of Birmingham; his Master's from the University of London; and his Ph.D. from the University of Kent at Canterbury. Between 1968 and 1986, he taught economics in Britain, Iran, Canada and the United States, and also worked as an economic consultant with the Organization of American States, the International Labor Organization, and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). He was Professor of Economics, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), 1985 and Professor of Sociology, University of California San Diego (UCSD), 1990. Since 1986, Katouzian has been teaching Persian literature and Iranian history at the University of Oxford and has organized two international conferences: the Hedayat Centenary, at the Middle East Centre, St. Antony's College, March 2003, and Iran Facing the New