Rate My Professor Hessam Dehghani

Hessam Dehghani is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in Persian Language and Culture in the Department of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia. He holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from Allameh Tabatabai University (2011), a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Boston College (2019), and an M.A. from Tehran University (2007). Prior to joining UBC in 2021, he completed postdoctoral fellowships at University College Dublin and Harvard University, with a focus on Islamic and Persianate Sufism, phenomenology, and the critical study of Sufi literature. His research specializations include Islamic philosophy, Persianate Sufi literature, critical pedagogy, hermeneutics, phenomenology, and critical heritage education.

At UBC, Dehghani directs the Persian Program and founded the UBC Persian Literature Reading Club, which provides weekly reading sessions and monthly talks on Persian literature and culture. He has lectured at institutions including Harvard Divinity School and Cambridge University. His awards include the 2023 Dean of Arts’ Leadership and Innovation Award at UBC for his work developing the Persian Language Program and curriculum innovation, the 2018 Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award at Boston College, a 2022 Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund grant, and multiple Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy fellowships. He is developing online interactive lesson plans for Persian language teachers, a four-volume coursebook for heritage learners titled Dastan Asan, and an online Persian learners’ dictionary of literary terms.