Touraj Atabaki wins British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize
Our colleague Touraj Atabaki won a prestigious prize for his latest book Toiling for Oil: A Social History of Petroleum in Iran. He was awarded one of the annual prizes to the best scholarly work in Middle Eastern Studies by the British-Kuwait Friendship Society Book Prize.
His book focuses on the experiences of the people working with oil. Through archival research and interviews Touraj traces a impact of the commodity, offering insights into the lives and challenges of oil workers alongside the analysis of wider geopolitical conflicts. His book was published by Cambridge University Press.
Some remarks from the reviewers:
“This book is undoubtedly a labour of love. Its author has worked for many years on the working class and labour movements in the Iranian oil industry, in many ways pioneering this field of study alongside some of his former students (some mentioned in text) who have conducted seminal work on the topic.”
“What is perhaps the original feature of the work is its treatment of the period post-1953 which has received relative scant attention in the academic literature, particularly the 1960s and the run up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978/9 with which the book ends. Further, the book provides a cogent discussion of the historiography of Iran’s political and labour history in the last 100 years or so.”
Other winners
We also congratulate Peter Hill, who won the first prize with his book Prophet of Reason: Science, Religion and the Origins of the Modern Middle East, and Jason Welle, who won with his book Companionship and Virtue in Classical Sufism: The Contribution of al-Sulami.
